nanomaterials Review Recent Progress of Black Silicon: From Fabrications to Applications Zheng Fan 1, Danfeng Cui 1, Zengxing Zhang 1, Zhou Zhao 1, Hongmei Chen 1, Yanyun Fan 1, Penglu Li 1, Zhidong Zhang 1 , Chenyang Xue 1,* and Shubin Yan 2,3,* 1 Key Laboratory of Instrumentation Science & Dynamic Measurement, Ministry of Education, North University of China, Taiyuan 030051, China;
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[email protected] (Z.Z.) 2 The School of Electrical Engineering, Zhejiang University of Water Resources and Electric Power, Hangzhou 310018, China 3 Zhejiang-Belarus Joint Laboratory of Intelligent Equipment and System for Water Conservancy and Hydropower Safety Monitoring, Zhejiang University of Water Resources and Electric Power, Hangzhou 310018, China * Correspondence:
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[email protected] (S.Y.) Abstract: Since black silicon was discovered by coincidence, the special material was explored for many amazing material characteristics in optical, surface topography, and so on. Because of the material property, black silicon is applied in many spheres of a photodetector, photovoltaic cell, photo-electrocatalysis, antibacterial surfaces, and sensors. With the development of fabrication technology, black silicon has expanded in more and more applications and has become a research hotspot. Herein, this review systematically summarizes the fabricating method of black silicon, including nanosecond or femtosecond laser irradiation, metal-assisted chemical etching (MACE), reactive ion etching (RIE), wet chemical etching, electrochemical method, and plasma immersion ion implantation (PIII) methods.