Research on controllable preparation and antireflection properties of zigzag SiNWs arrays

ABSTRACT

In this work, an alternative metal-assisted chemical etching method is proposed to fabricate large-area uniform zigzag silicon nanowires. The effects of deposition time, etching time, HF concentration and H₂O₂ concentration on the nanostructure of nanowires were systematically investigated. The results demonstrate the suitable preparation concentrations in the alternating etching process are HF([SI]/[SII] = 9.2 M/2.3 M) and H₂O₂{[SI]/[SII] = (0.04 M∼0.26 M)/(0.4 M∼0.65 M)}. Moreover, the anti-reflec-tion properties of the resulting zigzag SiNWs arrays have been studied, the average reflectance is almost lower than 10% at wavelength range of 200∼1200 nm. The superior anti-reflection performance of zigzag SiNWs shows a huge potential application in high-efficiency silicon solar cells.

KEYWORDS:

• Zigzag silicon nanowires
• alternating etching
• silver-assisted chemical etching
• anti-reflection properties

Funding

Financial support of this work from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51504117), Yunnan Applied Basic Research Project (2016FD037) and Talent Development Program of Kunming University of Science and Technology.