Highly organised and dense vertical silicon nanowire arrays grown in porous alumina template on <100> silicon wafers.

In this work, nanoimprint lithography combined with standard anodization etching is used to make perfectly organised triangular arrays of vertical cylindrical alumina nanopores onto standard <100>-oriented silicon wafers. Both the pore diameter and the period of alumina porous array are well controlled and can be tuned: the periods vary from 80 to 460 nm, and the diameters vary from 15 nm to any required diameter. These porous thin layers are then successfully used as templates for the guided epitaxial growth of organised mono-crystalline silicon nanowire arrays in a chemical vapour deposition chamber.

Ultradense and planarized antireflective vertical silicon nanowire array using a bottom-up technique.

The production and characterization of ultradense, planarized, and organized silicon nanowire arrays with good crystalline and optical properties are reported. First, alumina templates are used to grow silicon nanowires whose height, diameter, and density are easily controlled by adjusting the structural parameters of the template. Then, post-processing using standard microelectronic techniques enables the production of high-density silicon nanowire matrices featuring a remarkably flat overall surface.