Abstract
We report a simple one-step maskless fabrication of inverted pyramids on silicon wafers by reactive ion etching. The fabricated surface structures exhibit excellent anti-reflective properties: The total reflectance of the nano inverted pyramids fabricated by our method can be as low as 12% without any anti-reflective layers, and down to only 0.33% with a silicon nitride coating. The results from angle resolved scattering measurements indicate that the existence of triple reflections is responsible for the reduced reflectance. The surfaces with the nano inverted pyramids also exhibit a distinct milky white color.
Highlights
In this letter we report a simple one step maskless method to fabricate semi-periodic nano inverted pyramids on silicon wafer surfaces by reactive ion etching (RIE)
The structure fabricated by RIE is determined by complex reactions happening inside the RIE chamber, which according to many studies depend mainly on the gas ratio, chamber temperature, chamber pressure, and the platen power[2,3,5,10,11,23,24,25,26]
The average residence time τof a gas inside the RIE chamber can be defined as: τ=pV/Q26, where p is the pressure inside the chamber, V the plasma volume, and Q the gas flow rate
Summary
In this letter we report a simple one step maskless method to fabricate semi-periodic nano inverted pyramids on silicon wafer surfaces by RIE. The total reflectance of the inverted pyramids fabricated by our method can be as low as 12% without any anti-reflective layers, and down to only 0.33% with silicon nitride (SiNx) coatings. Three samples with inverted pyramidal structures (50-10-15, 50-10-20, and 55-10-10) are among those of the lowest specular and total reflectance (Fig. 2a,b).
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