Fabrication of uniform-macroporous silicon and its possible application in hybrid solar cell

This report presents the fabrication of uniform-macroporus-silicon (macro-PSi) using a chemical route. Electrochemical etching of the silicon wafer with Dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) was utilized to fabricate macro-PSi. Almost uniform pore formation was observed by Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). The pore-size distribution calculated from the SEM image clearly shows the nearly uniform nature of the fabricated macro-PSi. The uniform-porosity can be tuned well via adjusting the etching current and time. The fabricated macro-PSi with Aluminium (Al) as the back-contact was applied as a cathode of bulk-heterojunction organic solar cell to exploit the high-specific area of the macro-PSi for efficient charge collection. An enhancement in short-circuit current indicates an enhancement in the charge collection efficiency using macro-PSi as cathode.