Design and Fabrication of Enhanced Anti-‎Reflective Properties using ‎Pyramid/Nanowire Texturization of the ‎Silicon Surface ‎

This paper proposes an enhanced anti-reflective surface by applying pyramid/nanowire textures to the silicon wafer. Before texturization, for the first time, we applied a pre-treatment process to the Si wafers using silver assisted chemical etching (MACE) process, which makes the silicon wafer porous. This porosity affects formation of the later synthesized micro pyramids with more uniformity in shape and distribution. For pyramid formation, the etching process of the p-type (100) silicon wafers in the KOH solution with different concentrations of 3, 5, and 7 wt.% along with the isopropyl alcohol is accomplished and surveyed. Micro pyramids are realized with different sizes based on the KOH concentration. In continue, the MACE process with Ag is applied to the pre-formed pyramids to realize the Si nanowires. Therefore, composite texturization of the silicon substrate is achieved. These combined nanowire/pyramid structures significantly reduce the light reflection of the silicon substrate. The acquired reflection factors are less than 3% (<3%). X-ray diffraction (XRD) is utilized to study the synthesized structures' crystalline characteristics which reveals the Si-cubic structure. Moreover, Raman spectroscopy results of the samples are also proposed.