Optical characterization of nanopillar black silicon for plasmonic and solar cell application

With the goal of improving photo-absorption of photovoltaic device and for plasmonic application we have fabricated nanopillar black silicon devices through etching-passivation technique which does not require any photomask and whole wafer scale uniformity is achieved at room temperature in a short time. We have carried out thorough optical characterization for nanopillar black silicon devices to be used for solar cell and plasmonic applications. Cathodoluminescence (CL), current dependent CL spectroscopy, photoluminescence (at room temperature and 77 K), Raman spectroscopy, reflectance and absorption measurement have been performed on the device. A thin layer of Ag is deposited to render with plasmonic property and the plasmonic effect is probed using surface plasmon enhanced fluorescence, angle dependent reflectance measurements, high resolution cathodoluminescence (CL), surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) measurement and Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging Microscopy (FLIM) experiment. We obtained reduction in optical reflection of ∼ 12 times on b-Si substrate from UV to NIR range, the nanostructured fluorescence enhancement of ∼40 times and the Raman scattering enhancement factor of 6.4×10₇.