Spectroscopic Investigation of well aligned Silicon Nano wires Fabricated by Metal Induced Etching

Well aligned Silicon nano-wires (SiNWs) were fabricated by metal induced etching (MIE). Scanning electron microscopy has been employed to study the surface morphology and cross sectional view for confirming the nano-wire like structures in our samples. Presence of electronic continuum and quantum confinement effect in the SiNWs- samples has been revealed from Raman and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy. Blue emission is achieved from SiNWs sample. Moreover, the effect of etching time on fabrication of SiNWs and associated PL spectra are studied here. We found with increasing etching time, pores are broader resulting in smaller size nano-wires. With further increasing in etching time, these NWs broke from the top, resulted in a blunt top surface leading to large size NWs. After a certain etching time, upper part of SiNWs is being broken, which is also reflected in PL spectra. Raman Spectroscopy shows the phonon confinement and is used to estimate the particle size. A detailed results and discussions have been presented here