A systematic study of silicon nanowires array fabricated through metal-assisted chemical etching

Aligned and uniform silicon nanowires (SiNWs) arrays were fabricated with good controllability and reproducibility by metal-assisted chemical etching in aqueous AgNO 3 /HF etching solutions in atmosphere. The SiNWs formed on silicon were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX), high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) and selected-area electron diffraction (SAED). The results show that the as-prepared SiNWs are perfectly single crystals and the axial orientation of the Si nanowires is identified to be parallel to the [111] direction, which is identical to the initial silicon wafer. In addition, a series of experiments were conducted to study the effects of etching conditions such as solution concentration, etching time, and etching temperature on SiNWs. And the optimal solution concentrations for SiNWs have been identified. The formation mechanism of silicon nanowires and silver dendrites were also discussed.