Reliable Fabrication of Metal Contacts on Silicon Nanowire Forests

We present a technique for the fabrication of an electrical (and thermal) contact on the top ends of a large number of vertical silicon nanowires, which are fabricated perpendicularly to a silicon wafer (silicon nanowire forest). The technique is based on electrochemical deposition of copper and has been developed on silicon nanowire forests, fabricated by metal assisted chemical etching. We demonstrate that copper grows selectively only on the top end of the silicon nanowires, forming a layer onto the top of the forest. The presence of a predeposited metal seed is fundamental for the selective growth, meanwhile the process is very strong with respect to other parameters, such as concentration of the electrolytic solution and current density, used during the metal deposition. Typical I-V characteristics of top-to-bottom conduction through silicon nanowire forests with different n-doping are shown and discussed.