Optical and structural properties of Ag and $c$-Si nanostructures formed during the metal-assisted chemical etching of silicon

This study consisting of two parts is concerned with the features of the three-stage process of the metal-assisted chemical etching (MACE) of silicon. This process is used to fabricate silicon nanostructures. In the first part of this work, a layer of self-assembled Ag nanoparticles chemically deposited from a solution on the surface of single-crystal silicon ($c$-Si) (MACE stage 1) was studied, and the second part includes of investigation of Si nanostructures formed in stages 2 and 3. By means of spectroscopic ellipsometry (in the range of wavelengths $\lambda$ = 250–900 nm), the pseudodielectric functions of the nanostructures were determined and compared for all the three stages of the MACE process. In addition, for the Si nanostructures, the parameters of layers (the thickness and void fraction) were calculated in the context of the multilayer optical model, with the use of Bruggeman's effective-medium approximation and fitting procedures.