Tent-Shaped Surface Morphologies of Silicon: Texturization by Metal Induced Etching

Abstract

Nano-metal/semiconductor junction dependent porosification of silicon has been studied here. The silicon nanostructures (SiNSs) have been textured on n- and p- type silicon wafers using Ag (silver) and Au (gold) metal nano particles induced chemical etching. The combinations of n-silicon/Ag as well as p-silicon/Au form ohmic contact and result in the same texturization on the silicon surface on porosification, where tent-shaped morphology has been observed consistently in both n- and p-type silicon. Whereas, porosification result in different surface texturization for other two combinations (p-silicon/Ag and n-silicon/Au) where Schottky contacts are formed. Quantitative analysis have been done using ImageJ to process the scanning electron microscopy images of silicon NS, which confirms that the tent like silicon NS are formed when Ohmic junction is built. These easily prepared sharp tent-shaped Si NSs can be used for enhanced field emission applications.