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

• Published in: Journal of nanomaterials Vol. 2014; no. 2014; pp. 1 - 6
• Main Authors: Li, Shengyi, Wang, Haoxu, Chen, Jian, Wang, Chaoguang, Dong, Peitao, Wu, Xuezhong, Di, Di, Wang, Junfeng
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cairo, Egypt Hindawi Publishing Corporation 01.01.2014; Hindawi Limited
• Subjects: Arrays; Beads; Chromium; Efficiency; Etching; Laboratories; Light; Microscopy; Nanomaterials; Nanostructure; Polystyrene resins; Reflection; Semiconductors; Silicon; Silicon wafers; Solar energy; Wafers
• ISSN: 1687-4110; 1687-4129
• DOI: 10.1155/2014/439212

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.