Single crystal semiconductor micropillar and nanowire on amorphous substrates for low cost solar hydrogen generation

We report a novel method to fabricating single crystal and highly oriented 1-D Silicon micropillars and nanowires and then transferring them to coat a target surface of any topology using an innovative harvest/lift-off process. This method enables highly crystalline micro- and nano- pillars of different materials with diverse bandgaps and physical properties to be fabricated on appropriate mother substrates and transferred to form multilayered 3D stacks for multifunctional devices. This approach not only ensures the incorporation of any kind of material (with the best device characteristics) on a single substrate facilitating substrate-free device fabrications on any topology, but also allows the repeated use of a mother substrate for continual production of new devices. This capability of fabricating substrate-less devices will offer a universal platform for material integration and allow solar active devices to be coated on various surface topologies that would be suitable for solar hydrogen generation.