Wet chemical etching of silicon for conically textured surfaces

We disclose a method for the wet chemical etching of silicon (001) surface with a conical texture. This method involves a single-step etching process without additional surface treatments. The conical texture is compared to the pyramidal texture resulted from conventional chemical processes. Scanning electron microscopy reveals smaller dimensions of the surface cones as compared to the pyramids. Reflectance measurements show a slight decrease in the reflectivity for the samples with the conical texture as compared to the pyramidal texture. X-ray diffraction was performed to investigate the state of strain in the textured samples. In regard to the solar cell fabrication, we discuss in the paper the advantages of the conical texture as compared to the pyramid texture.