• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2008.11a
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• pp.418-418
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• 2008

The electrochemical etching of silicon in HF-based solutions is known to form various types of porous structures. Porous structures are generally classified into three categories according to pore sizes: micropore (below 2 nm in size), mesopore (2 ~ 50 nm), and macropore (above 50 nm). Recently, the formation of macropores has attracted increasing interest because of their promising characteristics for an wide scope of applications such as microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), chemical sensors, biotechnology, photonic crystals, and photovoltaic application. One of the promising applications of macropores is in the field of MEMS. Anisotropic etching is essential step for fabrication of MEMS. Conventional wet etching has advantages such as low processing cost and high throughput, but it is unsuitable to fabricate high-aspect-ratio structures with vertical sidewalls due to its inherent etching characteristics along certain crystal orientations. Reactive ion dry etching is another technique of anisotropic etching. This has excellent ability to fabricate high-aspect-ratio structures with vertical sidewalls and high accuracy. However, its high processing cost is one of the bottlenecks for widely successful commercialization of MEMS. In contrast, by using electrochemical etching method together with pre-patterning by lithographic step, regular macropore arrays with very high-aspect-ratio up to 250 can be obtained. The formed macropores have very smooth surface and side, unlike deep reactive ion etching where surfaces are damaged and wavy. Especially, to make vertical microwire or nanowire arrays (aspect ratio = over 1:100) on silicon wafer with top-down photolithography, it is very difficult to fabricate them with conventional dry etching. The electrochemical etching is the most proper candidate to do it. The pillar structures are demonstrated for n-type silicon and the formation mechanism is well explained, while such a experimental results are few for p-type silicon. In this report, In order to understand the roles played by the kinds of etching solution and mask patterns in the formation of microwire arrays, we have undertaken a systematic study of the solvent effects in mixtures of HF, dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), iso-propanol, and mixtures of HF with water on the structure formation on monocrystalline p-type silicon with a resistivity with 10 ~ 20 $\Omega{\cdot}cm$. The different morphological results are presented according to mask patterns and etching solutions.

• Proceedings of the Materials Research Society of Korea Conference
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• 2011.05a
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• pp.8.1-8.1
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• 2011

Nanocrystalline titanium dioxide ($TiO_2$) materials have been widely used as an electron collector in DSSC. This is required to have an extremely high porosity and surface area such that the dye can be sufficiently adsorbed and be electronically interconnected, resulting in the generation of a high photocurrent within cells. In particular, their geometrical structures and crystalline phase have been extensively investigated as important issues in improving its photovoltaic efficiency. In this study, we present a new strategy to fabricate a photoelectrode having a periodic structured $TiO_2$ film templated from 1D or 3D polystyrene (PS) microspheres array. Monodisperse PS spheres of various radiuses were used for colloidal array on FTO glasses and two types of photoelectrode structures with different $TiO_2$ materials were investigated respectively. One is the igloo-shaped electrode prepared by $TiO_2$ deposition by RF-sputtering onto 2D microsphere-templated substrates. At the interface between the film and substrate, there are voids formed by the decomposition of PS microspheres during the calcination step. These holes might be expected to play the predominant roles as scattering spherical voids to promote a light harvesting effect, a spacious structure for electrolytes with higher viscosity and effective paths for electron transfer. Additionally the nanocrystalline $TiO_2$ phase prepared by the RF-sputtering method was previously reported to improve the electron drift mobility within $TiO_2$ electrodes. This yields solar cells with a cell efficiency of 2.45% or more at AM 1.5 illumination, which is a very remarkable result, considering its $TiO_2$ electrode thickness (<2 ${\mu}m$). This study can be expanded to obtain higher cell efficiency by higher dye loading through the increase of surface area or multi-layered stacking. The other is the inverse opal photonic crystal electrode prepared by titania particles infusion within 3D colloidal arrays. To obtain the enlargement of ordered area and high quality of crystallinity, the synthesis of titania particles coated with a organic thin layer were applied instead of sol-gel process using the $TiO_2$ precursors. They were dispersed so well in most solvents without aggregates and infused successfully within colloidal array structures. This ordered mesoporous structure provides the large surface area leading to the enough adsorption of dye molecules and have an light harvesting effect due to the photonic band gap properties (back-and-forth reflection effects within structures). A major advantage of this colloidal array template method is that the pore size and its distribution within $TiO_2$ photoelectrodes are determined by those of latex beads, which can be controlled easily. These materials may have promising potentials for future applications of membrane, sensor and so on as well as solar cells.