Wafer-Scale Fabrication of Ultra-High Aspect Ratio, Microscale Silicon Structures with Smooth Sidewalls Using Metal Assisted Chemical Etching

Silicon structures with ultra-high aspect ratios have great potential applications in the fields of optoelectronics and biomedicine. However, the slope and increased roughness of the sidewalls inevitably introduced during the use of conventional etching processes (e.g., Bosch and DRIE) remain an obstacle to their application. In this paper, 4-inch wafer-scale, ultra-high aspect ratio (>140:1) microscale silicon structures with smooth sidewalls are successfully prepared using metal-assisted chemical etching (MacEtch). Here, we clarify the impact of the size from the metal catalytic structure on the sidewall roughness. By optimizing the etchant ratio to accelerate the etch rate of the metal-catalyzed structure and employing thermal oxidation, the sidewall roughness can be significantly reduced (average root mean square (RMS) from 42.3 nm to 15.8 nm). Simulations show that a maximum exciton production rate (Gmax) of 1.21 × 1026 and a maximum theoretical short-circuit current density (Jsc) of 39.78 mA/cm2 can be obtained for the micropillar array with smooth sidewalls, which have potential applications in high-performance microscale photovoltaic devices.