On the Formation of Black Silicon Features by Plasma-Less Etching of Silicon in Molecular Fluorine Gas.

In this paper, we study the plasma-less etching of crystalline silicon (c-Si) by F2/N2 gas mixture at moderately elevated temperatures. The etching is performed in an inline etching tool, which is specifically developed to lower costs for products needing a high volume manufacturing etching platform such as silicon photovoltaics. Specifically, the current study focuses on developing an effective front-side texturing process on Si(100) wafers. Statistical variation of the tool parameters is performed to achieve high etching rates and low surface reflection of the textured silicon surface. It is observed that the rate and anisotropy of the etching process are strongly defined by the interaction effects between process parameters such as substrate temperature, F2 concentration, and process duration. The etching forms features of sub-micron dimensions on c-Si surface. By maintaining the anisotropic nature of etching, weighted surface reflection (Rw) as low as Rw < 2% in Si(100) is achievable. The lowering of Rw is mainly due to the formation of deep, density grade nanostructures, so-called black silicon, with lateral dimensions that are smaller to the major wavelength ranges of interest in silicon photovoltaics.

Online process control of acidic texturisation baths with ion chromatography.

Etching of silicon with mixtures of hydrofluoric acid and nitric acid is a widely used process in silicon solar cell fabrication. One precondition for an optimized usage of the acidic etching baths is the exact knowledge of the chemical bath composition. In this paper, we investigated a fast and online-capable method for the total analysis of all bath constituents by ion chromatography. The chromatographical system consists of a low-volume injection valve, which injects the concentrated samples directly into the KOH-based eluent. After separation and detection of nitrate and fluoride, a post-column derivatization with sodium molybdate is applied to detect the hexafluorosilicic acid, which enriches in the texturisation bath during the etching process. The results of the presented approach are discussed and compared with already published chromatographical and titration methods found in literature.