3D silicon micro-pillars/-walls decorated with aluminum-ZnO/ZnO nanowires for opto-electronic device applications

In this paper, high aspect ratio vertically oriented p-silicon (100) micropillars and microwalls were fabricated using the deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) process with the BOSCH recipe of cyclical passivation and etching. Two different patterns were etched; uniform pillar arrays of dimensions ~15μm (height) x 2μm (diameter) and wall arrays of dimensions ~1.5μm (width) x 25μm (height). Three-dimensional (3D) heterostructures of n-ZnO/p-Si heterostructures were fabricated from growing hydrothermally dense arrays of ZnO nanowires (290-400 nm in length and 48-80 nm in diameter) and depositing Aluminum-ZnO (AZO) thin film onto the high aspect ratio vertically oriented p-silicon micropillars and microwalls. The performances of the fabricated heterostructure optoelectronic devices were characterized for different applications including solar cells, photodetectors and field ionization gas sensors.