Nanopillars by cesium chloride self-assembly and dry etching

We introduce a method combining cesium chloride self-assembly and inductively coupled plasma to fabricate nanopillars with uniform coverage over an entire 4 inch prepatterned silicon wafer. This method can produce pillars with average diameters ranging from 50 nm to 1.5 µm, aspect ratios up to 13 and coverage ratios above 35%. Cesium chloride self-assembly utilizes the deliquescence of salt, with advantages of excellent tunability, high aspect ratio and potential for micro/nano mixed structures, which makes this technology promising in the areas of MEMS, solar cells, batteries, light emitting diodes, etc.