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A route to engineered high aspect-ratio silicon nanostructures through regenerative secondary mask lithography

Michalska, M; Laney, SK; Li, T; Tiwari, MK; Parkin, IP; Papakonstantinou, I; (2022) A route to engineered high aspect-ratio silicon nanostructures through regenerative secondary mask lithography. Nanoscale , 14 (5) pp. 1847-1854. 10.1039/D1NR07024J. Green open access

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Abstract

Silicon nanostructuring imparts unique material properties including antireflectivity, antifogging, anti-icing, self-cleaning, and/or antimicrobial activity. To tune these properties however, a good control over features size and shape is essential. Here, a versatile fabrication process is presented to achieve tailored silicon nanostructures (thin/thick pillars, sharp/truncated/re-entrant cones), of pitch down to ~50 nm, and high-aspect ratio (>10). The approach relies on pre-assembled block copolymer (BCP) micelles and their direct transfer into a glass hard mask of an arbitrary thickness, now enabled by our recently reported regenerative secondary mask lithography. During this pattern transfer, not only the mask diameter can be decreased but also uniquely increased; constituting the first method to achieve such tunability without necessitating a different molecular weight BCP. Consequently, the hard mask modulation (height, diameter) advances the flexibility in attainable inter-pillar spacing, aspect ratios, and re-entrant profiles (= glass on silicon). Combined with adjusted silicon etch conditions, the morphology of nanopatterns can be highly customized. The process control and scalability enable uniform patterning of a 6-inch wafer which is verified through cross-wafer excellent antireflectivity (<5%) and water-repellency (advancing contact angle 158{\deg}; hysteresis 1{\deg}). It is envisioned the implementation of this approach to silicon nanostructuring to be far-reaching, facilitating fundamental studies and targeting applications spanning solar panels, antifogging/antibacterial surfaces, sensing, amongst many others.

Type: Article
Title: A route to engineered high aspect-ratio silicon nanostructures through regenerative secondary mask lithography
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1039/D1NR07024J
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1039/D1NR07024J
Language: English
Additional information: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Electronic and Electrical Eng
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Mechanical Engineering
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10142286
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