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Silicon microstructures through the production of silicon nanowires by metal-assisted chemical etching, used as sacrificial material

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Abstract

A simple, inexpensive and wafer-scale method to obtain Si microstructures is proposed. The method consists in a sequence of steps that include a selective metal-assisted chemical etching process to create regions of Si nanowires that are sacrificed in a post-etching process, leaving microstructures standing. As a proof of concept, Si micropillars with length of 7 µm and diameter of 1.4 µm were fabricated. The advantage of the proposed method is its simplicity, allowing the production of microstructures in a basic chemical laboratory.

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by Projects CONACyT INFR-2011-1-163153, CONACyT CB-2014-01-243407 and PROMEP BUAP-NPTC-377. The author O. Pérez-Díaz acknowledges the financial support of CONACyT through the scholarship with No. 378447.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Physics, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, P.O. Box J-48, 72570, Puebla, Mexico

    O. Pérez-Díaz, E. Quiroga-González & N. R. Silva-González

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  1. O. Pérez-Díaz
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  2. E. Quiroga-González
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  3. N. R. Silva-González
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Correspondence to E. Quiroga-González.

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Pérez-Díaz, O., Quiroga-González, E. & Silva-González, N.R. Silicon microstructures through the production of silicon nanowires by metal-assisted chemical etching, used as sacrificial material. J Mater Sci 54, 2351–2357 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-018-3003-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-018-3003-z

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