Metal‐assisted chemical etching (MacEtch) of silicon in oxidizing hydrofluoric acid (HF) solutions has emerged as a prominent top‐down micro/nanofabrication approach for a wide variety of silicon micro/nanostructures. The popularity of the process is due to its simplicity, rapidity, versatility, and scalability. In recent years, there has been a surge of interest in developing MacEtch silicon micro/nanostructures for advanced energy conversion and storage applications, such as photovoltaic devices, thermoelectric devices, lithium‐ion rechargeable batteries, and supercapacitors. Particularly, MacEtch has emerged as a powerful surface micro/nanostructuring method for low‐cost and scalable production of commercial black silicon (b‐Si) with excellent light trapping properties. This review on MacEtch processing of silicon in oxidizing HF solutions provides a critical description of its history and origin including how it evolved into what it is today, the understanding of its mechanism and important technical advances in the field. As regards MacEtch‐fabricated b‐Si, its initial discovery and further improvements to its large‐scale deployment in silicon photovoltaic industry are traced. Some fundamental challenges and perspectives in this exciting field are also discussed.

中文翻译：

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氧化HF解决方案中硅的金属辅助化学蚀刻：起源，机理，发展和黑硅太阳能电池应用

在氧化氢氟酸（HF）溶液中对硅进行金属辅助化学蚀刻（MacEtch），已成为一种显着的自上而下的微/纳米加工方法，适用于多种硅微/纳米结构。该过程之所以流行，是因为其简单，快速，多功能和可扩展。近年来，对于用于高级能量转换和存储应用的MacEtch硅微/纳米结构的开发兴趣日益浓厚，例如光伏设备，热电设备，锂离子可充电电池和超级电容器。特别是，MacEtch已成为一种强大的表面微/纳米结构化方法，可低成本，可扩展地生产具有出色的光捕获特性的商用黑硅（b-Si）。这篇有关氧化性HF溶液中硅的MacEtch处理的综述提供了对其历史和起源的批判性描述，包括其如何演变成今天的状态，对其机理的理解以及该领域的重要技术进步。关于MacEtch制造的b-Si，可追溯到其最初的发现以及对在硅光伏行业大规模部署的进一步改进。还讨论了这个令人兴奋的领域中的一些基本挑战和观点。