Model of black silicon formation just from surface temperature non-uniformities

The scientific issue of this paper is the formation of the initial surface roughening during black silicon (b-Si) preparation by maskless SF6/O2 plasma texturing. In detail, the authors investigate a novel approach whether merely substrate temperature dependent surface mechanisms and plasma particle diffusion are sufficient to theoretically obtain anisotropic etching. For that, a quasi-2D model is developed including the relevant mechanisms such as (i) etching, (ii) the deposition of the masking layer SiOxFy, (iii) plasma particle transport, and (iv) heat diffusion. Further on, a linear stability analysis is applied, firstly, to reveal theoretical conditions for anisotropic etching and, secondly, to qualitatively evaluate the impact of the model parameters on the texturing range. The evaluation shows that plasma particle diffusion along the surface is the main factor for nano-roughening. Additionally, the experimentally expected strong dependency of the texturing on the substrate temperature is confirmed and other extracted dependencies can be correlated to experimental observations. With that, a novel model is introduced explaining the initial b-Si roughening without taking into account surface removal by directed ions.