Effects of silicon nanostructure morphology at different metal catalyst layer thicknesses in Metal-assisted etching

A fast and simple approach to create silicon nanostructures using metal-assisted etching is reported. Effect of catalyst metal layer thickness on silicon nanostructure morphology was investigated in this study. Au and Ag with thickness of 3 nm, 5 nm and 10 nm were used as the metal catalyst layers to study the effects of metal catalyst thickness on silicon nanostructure morphology. The experimental results show that metal catalyst layer thicknesses have a significant influence on the silicon nanostructure morphology, such that the silicon nanostructures transform from random, disordered porous silicon surfaces into silicon nanowire or nanofilament nanostructures with increasing metal layer thickness for both gold and silver.