Influence of etching current density on the morphology of macroporous silicon arrays by photo-electrochemical etching

Macroporous silicon arrays（MSA） have attracted much attention for their potential applications in photonic crystals,silicon microchannel plates,MEMS devices and so on.In order to fabricate perfect MSA structure,photo-electrochemical （PEC） etching of MSA and the influence of etching current on the pore morphology were studied in detail.The current-voltage curve of a polished n-type silicon wafer was presented in aqueous HF using back-side illumination.The critical current density J_（PS） was discussed and the basic condition of etching current density for steady MSA growth was proposed.An indirect method was presented to measure the relation of J_（PS） at the pore tip and etching time.MSA growth was realized with the pore diameter constant by changing the etching current density according to the measuring result of J_（PS）.MSA with 295μm of depth and 98 of aspect ratio was obtained.

Influence of voltage on photo-electrochemical etching of n-type macroporous silicon arrays

The influence of voltage on photo-electrochemical etching（PEC） of macroporous silicon arrays（MSA） was researched.According to the theory of the space charge region,I-V scan curves and the reaction mechanism of the n-type silicon anodic oxidation in HF solution under different current densities,the pore morphology influenced by the working voltage were studied and analyzed in detail.The results show that increasing the etching voltage will lead to distortion of the pore morphology,decreasing etching voltage will result in an increase in the blind porosity, and the constant etching voltage for a long time will cause gradual bifurcation.Through the optimization of the process parameters,the perfect MSA structure with a pore depth of 317μm,a pore size of 3μm and an aspect ratio of 105 was obtained.

Novel method of separating macroporous arrays from p-type silicon substrate

This paper presents a novel method to fabricate separated macroporous silicon using a single step of photo-assisted electrochemical etching. The method is applied to fabricate silicon microchannel plates in 1 O0 mm p-type silicon wafers, which can be used as electron multipliers and three-dimensional Li-ion microbatteries. Increasing the backside illumination intensity and decreasing the bias simultaneously can generate additional holes during the electrochemical etching which will create lateral etching at the pore tips. In this way the silicon microchannel can be separated from the substrate when the desired depth is reached, then it can be cut into the desired shape by using a laser cutting machine. Also, the mechanism of lateral etching is proposed.