Fabrication and characterization of silicon nanostructures based on metal-assisted chemical etching

We present a facile method to fabricate one-dimensional Si nanostructures based on Ag-induced selective etching of silicon wafers. To obtain evenly distributed Si nanowires (SiNWs), the fabrication parameters have been optimized. As a result, a maximum of average growth rate of 0.15 μm/min could be reached. Then, the fabricated samples were characterized by water contact angle (CA) experiments. As expected, the as-etched silicon samples exhibited a contact angle in the range of 132°–136.5°, whereas a higher contact angle (145°) could be obtained by chemical modification of the SiNWs with octadecyltrichlorosilane (OTS). Additionally, Raman spectra experiments have been carried out on as-prepared nanostructures, showing a typical decreasing from 520.9 cm−1 to 512.4 cm−1 and an asymmetric broadening, which might be associated with the phonon quantum confinement effect of Si nanostructures.