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Micromachines
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Micro- and Nano-Fabrication by Metal Assisted Chemical Etching, Volume II
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Micro- and Nano-Fabrication by Metal Assisted Chemical Etching, Volume II

A special issue of Micromachines (ISSN 2072-666X). This special issue belongs to the section "D：Materials and Processing".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (28 February 2023) | Viewed by 9354

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Lucia Romano

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
1. Institute for Biomedical Engineering, University and ETH Zürich, 8092 Zürich, Switzerland
2. Paul Scherrer Institute, Forschungsstrasse 111, CH-5232 Villigen, Switzerland
Interests: X-ray optics; gratings; silicon etching; metal-assisted chemical etching; silicon nanowires
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Metal assisted chemical etching (MacEtch) has recently emerged as a new etching technique capable of fabricating high aspect ratio nano- and micro-structures in a few semiconductor substrates—Si, Ge, poly-Si, GaAs, and SiC—and using different catalysts—Ag, Au, Pt, Pd, Cu, Ni, and Rh. Several shapes have been demonstrated with high anisotropy and feature size in the nanoscale—nanoporous films, nanowires, 3D objects, and trenches, which are useful components of photonic devices, microfluidic devices, bio-medical devices, batteries, Vias, MEMS, X-ray optics, and so on. With no limitations of large-areas and low-cost processing, MacEtch can open up new opportunities for several applications where high-precision nano- and micro-fabrication is required. This can make semiconductor manufacturing more accessible to researchers in various fields and accelerates innovation in electronics, bio-medical engineering, energy, and photonics. Accordingly, this Special Issue seeks to showcase research papers and review articles that focus on novel methodological developments in MacEtch, and its use for various applications.

Dr. Lucia Romano
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Micromachines is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • silicon microfabrication
  • nanowires
  • semiconductor processing
  • 3D microstructures
  • wet etching
  • anisotropic etching
  • X-ray optics
  • high aspect ratio
  • deep trench

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Related Special Issue

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

12 pages, 9079 KiB  
Article
Wafer-Scale Fabrication of Ultra-High Aspect Ratio, Microscale Silicon Structures with Smooth Sidewalls Using Metal Assisted Chemical Etching
by Xiaomeng Zhang, Chuhao Yao, Jiebin Niu, Hailiang Li and Changqing Xie
Micromachines 2023, 14(1), 179; https://doi.org/10.3390/mi14010179 - 10 Jan 2023
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 3048
Abstract
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 [...] Read more.
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. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Micro- and Nano-Fabrication by Metal Assisted Chemical Etching, Volume II)
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11 pages, 3191 KiB  
Article
Bio-Inspired Hierarchical Micro-/Nanostructures for Anti-Icing Solely Fabricated by Metal-Assisted Chemical Etching
by Lansheng Zhang, Xiaoyang Chu, Feng Tian, Yang Xu and Huan Hu
Micromachines 2022, 13(7), 1077; https://doi.org/10.3390/mi13071077 - 7 Jul 2022
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2550
Abstract
We report a cost-effective and scalable methodology for producing a hierarchical micro-/nanostructured silicon surface solely by metal-assisted chemical etching. It involves two major processing steps of fabricating micropillars and nanowires separately. The process of producing micro-scale structures by masked metal-assisted chemical etching was [...] Read more.
We report a cost-effective and scalable methodology for producing a hierarchical micro-/nanostructured silicon surface solely by metal-assisted chemical etching. It involves two major processing steps of fabricating micropillars and nanowires separately. The process of producing micro-scale structures by masked metal-assisted chemical etching was optimized. Silicon nanowires were created on the micropillar’s surface via maskless metal-assisted chemical etching. The hierarchical micro-/nanostructured surface exhibits superhydrophobic properties with a high contact angle of ~156° and a low sliding angle of <2.5° for deionized water. Furthermore, due to the existence of microscale and nanoscale air trapped at the liquid/solid interface, it exhibits a long ice delay time of 2876 s at −5 °C, more than 5 times longer than that of smooth surfaces. Compared to conventional dry etching methods, the metal-assisted chemical etching approach excludes vacuum environments and high-temperature processes and can be applied for applications requiring hierarchical micro-/nanostructured surfaces or structures. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Micro- and Nano-Fabrication by Metal Assisted Chemical Etching, Volume II)
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11 pages, 3088 KiB  
Article
Fabrication and Characterization of Inverted Silicon Pyramidal Arrays with Randomly Distributed Nanoholes
by Yue Zhao, Kaiping Zhang, Hailiang Li and Changqing Xie
Micromachines 2021, 12(8), 931; https://doi.org/10.3390/mi12080931 - 5 Aug 2021
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2833
Abstract
We report the fabrication, electromagnetic simulation and measurement of inverted silicon pyramidal arrays with randomly distributed nanoholes that act as an anti-reflectivity coating. The fabrication route combines the advantages of anisotropic wet etching and metal-assisted chemical etching. The former is employed to form [...] Read more.
We report the fabrication, electromagnetic simulation and measurement of inverted silicon pyramidal arrays with randomly distributed nanoholes that act as an anti-reflectivity coating. The fabrication route combines the advantages of anisotropic wet etching and metal-assisted chemical etching. The former is employed to form inverted silicon pyramid arrays, while the latter is used to generate randomly distributed nanoholes on the surface and sidewalls of the generated inverted silicon pyramidal arrays. We demonstrate, numerically and experimentally, that such a structure facilitates the multiple reflection and absorption of photons. The resulting nanostructure can achieve the lowest reflectance of 0.45% at 700 nm and the highest reflectance of 5.86% at 2402 nm. The average reflectance in the UV region (250–400 nm), visible region (400–760 nm) and NIR region (760–2600 nm) are 1.11, 0.63 and 3.76%, respectively. The reflectance at broadband wavelength (250–2600 nm) is 14.4 and 3.4 times lower than silicon wafer and silicon pyramids. In particular, such a structure exhibits high hydrophobicity with a contact angle up to 132.4°. Our method is compatible with well-established silicon planar processes and is promising for practical applications of anti-reflectivity coating. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Micro- and Nano-Fabrication by Metal Assisted Chemical Etching, Volume II)
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