A Correlation between the Kinetics and Thermodynamics for the Photo-Electrochemical Etching of N-Si in 2MHF-Ethanolic Solutions

In the photo-electrochemical etching of Si/HF system, the kinetics was investigated extensively in the literature. Usually, any problem belonging to science and engineering was solved using both thermodynamic and kinetic aspects. In this work, the kinetic of the system was correlated with the thermodynamics, by introducing the energy bend diagrams, to comprehend the etching trend. The effect of ethanol added into the system was concerned. The results from photo-electrochemical kinetics (i.e., i-v diagram) are in agreement with that expected from thermodynamics via estimation of activation energy estimation from the corresponding energy band diagrams. The SEM morphology reconfirmed the result inferred from both aspects.