Simple, Fast, and Cost-Effective Fabrication of Wafer-Scale Nanohole Arrays on Silicon for Antireflection

Di Di,Xuezhong Wu,Peitao Dong,Junfeng Wang,Shengyi Li,Jian Chen,Haoxu Wang,Chaoguang Wang

doi:10.1155/2014/439212

Di Di, Xuezhong Wu + Show 6 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1155/2014/439212

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Abstract

A simple, fast, and cost-effective method was developed in this paper for the high-throughput fabrication of nanohole arrays on silicon (Si), which is utilized for antireflection. Wafer-scale polystyrene (PS) monolayer colloidal crystal was developed as templates by spin-coating method. Metallic shadow mask was prepared by lifting off the oxygen etched PS beads from the deposited chromium film. Nanohole arrays were fabricated by Si dry etching. A series of nanohole arrays were fabricated with the similar diameter but with different depth. It is found that the maximum depth of the Si-hole was determined by the diameter of the Cr-mask. The antireflection ability of these Si-hole arrays was investigated. The results show that the reflection decreases with the depth of the Si-hole. The deepest Si-hole arrays show the best antireflection ability (reflection < 9%) at long wavelengths (>600 nm), which was about 28 percent of the nonpatterned silicon wafer’s reflection. The proposed method has the potential for high-throughput fabrication of patterned Si wafer, and the low reflectivity allows the application of these wafers in crystalline silicon solar cells.

Highlights

Solar cell is an important development direction for clean and renewable energy [1]
Crystal silicon solar cells dominated a significant position in the commercial solar cell market [2]
A drop (1200 μL) of PS dispersions was spread onto silicon wafer, and the solution was allowed to uniformly cover the wafer surface for 30 s before spincoating process started

Summary

Introduction

Solar cell is an important development direction for clean and renewable energy [1]. Crystal silicon solar cells dominated a significant position in the commercial solar cell market [2]. Constructing periodic patterns directly on silicon substrates is attractive for solar cells due to its strong enhanced light trapping and potential low cost [4]. A simple, controllable, costeffective, and high-throughput fabrication method was of primary importance for practical commercial application. Laser holographic lithography has been used to fabricate silicon nanoholes [11,12,13] It was considered a potentially high throughput process for periodic nanostructures fabrication. It is limited by the light wavelength in fabrication and the huge cost. We demonstrated a simple, fast, and costeffective strategy for high-throughput fabrication of antireflective nanohole arrays on silicon.

Experimental

Results and Discussions

Conclusions