Optical Properties of Black Silicon Using the Combination Method of KOH and Gold-Assisted HF Etching

A kind of hill-like black silicon have been designed and fabricated by using the combination method of KOH anisotropic etching and gold-assisted HF etching. Pillars array on the surface of a silicon sample was obtained by KOH etching with a SiNx film dots pattern used as a mask. The sample was then etched in the oxidant HF solution catalyzed by Au nanoparticles for 5 minutes. The etched sample appears dark black. This black silicon is orderly hill-like textures in micro-scale with density nanopores on them. It can suppress the reflection to less than 4% in wavelength range from 250nm to 1000nm, and to about 2.5% at the wave number of 2000-4000 cm-1. It also has high additional absorption in IR range.