UV light enhanced metal-assisted chemical etching of SiC triangular nanostructure arrays

Silicon carbide (SiC) is widely used in high-temperature, high-frequency and high-power electronic devices due to its wide band gap, high breakdown electric field and high electron saturation rate. However, due to the inherent chemical inertness of SiC, wet etching processing of SiC nanostructure arrays is still a challenging topic. In this work, nanoscale triangular mask arrays were processed by self-assembled PS nanospheres, and triangular nanostructure arrays were fabricated on 4H-SiC substrates by UV light enhanced metal-assisted chemical etching (UV-MACE). By investigating the morphological evolution of the bilayer PS nanospheres under different plasma etching time, two different triangular mask arrays with lengths of 370 nm and 420 nm were obtained after metals deposition by magnetron sputtering. The SiC triangular nanopillar arrays and triangular nanopore arrays were fabricated by UV light enhanced metal-assisted chemical etching with double-sided gold deposition, and such triangular nanostructures have potential applications in surface enhanced Raman scattering.