Large scale low cost fabrication of diameter controllable silicon nanowire arrays

• Main Authors: Sun, Leimeng, Fan, Yu, Wang, Xinghui, Agung Susantyoko, Rahmat, Zhang, Qing
• Other Authors: School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering::Nanoelectronics
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/103458; http://hdl.handle.net/10220/24497
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

We report on a novel solution etching method to fabricate vertically aligned aperiodic silicon nanowire (SiNW) arrays. We begin with a simple dewetting process to fabricate a monolayer of well-spaced metal particles in situ on a silicon wafer. The particles function as a sacrificial template to pattern a Ti/Au catalyst film into a metal mesh and the size of particles directly determines the diameter of SiNW. A conventional metal-assisted chemical etching process is then carried out with the obtained metal mesh as a catalyst to realize a vertically aligned SiNW array at a large scale and low cost.