Fabrication of precisely controlled silicon wire and cone arrays by electrochemical etching

There is an exponentially growing need for well-oriented, vertical silicon nano/micro-structure arrays, particularly in high-density integrated electronic devices. Here, we demonstrate that precisely controlled vertical arrays of silicon wires and cones can be fabricated by a combined treatment strategy of electrochemical and chemical etchings. First, a periodically ordered array of silicon wires was readily fabricated at microscale by simple electrochemical etching in which the current density played a critical role in determining the wire diameter and interspacing. The microstructures fabricated by electrochemical etching were more precisely tuned by further chemical etching, thereby transforming into cone arrays with extremely sharp tips where the cone height was controlled by the etching time. This approach could have broad utility in many electronics requiring miniaturization and high-density integration such as field emitters, photovoltaic and thermoelectric devices.