Simple and Rapid Fabrication Process of Porous Silicon Surface Using Inductively Coupled Plasma Reactive Ion Etching

Abstract

In this study, the simple and rapid formation of porous silicon on a pillar array structure using inductively coupled plasma reactive ion etching (ICP-RIE) is realized. This method can render the outermost surface porous without using an additional etching or deposition apparatus because the same equipment is used to form the structure. As a basic experiment, we attempted to etch the structure by considerably varying three parameters (bias power, chamber pressure, and gas flow rate) in ICP-RIE. The etching step condition was determined for the porous structure from the result. Furthermore, we obtained a porous pillar surface while almost maintaining the structure by performing multicycle etching and an additional passivation step. A number of pores (diameter: ~100 nm) were formed randomly on the side wall of the pillar array using the proposed method. Compared with original pillar, the surface roughness of porous pillar increased by 48%. [2019-0216]