Study of magnetoconductance effect in silicon nanowires formed by chemical etching in HF/AgNO3 solution: Effect of etching time

The magneto-transport proprieties of silicon nanowires (SiNWs) for various etching time at room temperature has been studied. SiNWs were formed by metal-assisted chemical etching of crystalline silicon in AgNO3-based chemical solutions. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) shows that the SiNWs may have different structures and their lengths depending on the etching time. We found that the electrical conductance and magnetoconductance (MC) effect are extremely depended on the etching time. MC measurements at room temperature revealed a positive MC and this effect is important and it reaches up to 9% at a magnetic field of 0.5 T. The latter effect can be discussed in terms of quasi-one-dimensional (quasi-1D) weak localization (WL) theory.