Influence of wet etching in KOH on defects in silicon nanowires formed by cryogenic dry etching

Abstract

The work is devoted to exploration of arrays of vertical aligned silicon nanowires (SiNWs) obtained by cryogenic dry etching in ICP mode with height of 4.5-5.5 μm and aspect ratio of 7. It was shown that geometry of nanowires has crucial influence on rate of wet etching in KOH since it is higher for 3D objects than for planar wafer, and the diameter should be the same along the nanowire for controlled wet etching. Wet etching in 4% KOH solution during 30 s allowed to save array of uniformity vertical aligned SiNWs with height of 4 μm and diameter of 500 nm. Such treatment reduced concentration of defects detected by deep-level transient spectroscopy, particularly, it drops as minimum in two times for deep level with Ea=0.68-0.74 eV placed near to surface of wafer.