In this study a two-step short wet etching was implemented for the black silicon formation. The proposed structure consists of two steps. The first step: wet acidic etched pits-like morphology with a quite new solution of lowering the texturization temperature and second step: wires structure obtained by a metal assisted etching (MAE). The temperature of the process was chosen due to surface development control and surface defects limitation during texturing process. This allowed to maintain better minority carrier lifetime compared to etching in ambient temperature. On the top of the acidic texture the wires were formed with optimized height of 350 nm. The effective reflectance of presented black silicon structure in the wavelength range of 300-1100 nm was equal to 3.65%.

High pressure die casting (HDPC) allows to produce aluminum parts for car industry of complicated shapes in long series. Dies used in this process must be robust enough to withstand long term injection cycling with liquid aluminum alloys, as otherwise their defects are imprinted on the product making them unacceptable. It is expected that nitriding followed by coating deposition (duplex treatment) should protect them in best way and increase intervals between the cleaning/repairing operations. The present experiment covered investigations of the microstructure of the as nitride and deposited with CrAlN coating as well as its shape after foundry tests. The observations were performed with the scanning and transmission electron microscopy (SEM/TEM) method. They showed that the bottom part of this bi-layer is formed by roughly equi-axed Cr2N crystallites, while the upper one with the fine columnar (CrAl)N crystallites. This bi-layers were matched with a set of 7x nano-layers of CrN/(CrAl)N, while at the coating bottom a CrN buffer layer was placed. The foundry run for up to 19 500 cycles denuded most of coated area exposed to fast liquid flow (40 m/s) but left most of bottom part of the coating in the areas exposed to slower flow (7 m/s). The acquired data indicated that the main weakness of this coating was in its porosity present both at the columnar grain boundaries (upper layer) as well as at the bottom of droplets imbedded in it (both layers). They nucleate cracks propagating perpendicularly and the latter at an angle or even parallel to the substrate. The most crack resistant part of the coating turned-out the bottom layer built of roughly equiaxed fine Cr2N crystallites. Even application of this relatively simple duplex protection in the form of CrAlN coating deposited on the nitride substrate helped to extend the die run in the foundry by more than three times.

This paper presents research on the deposition of an indium tin oxide (ITO) layer which may act as a recombination layer in a silicon/perovskite tandem solar cell. ITO was deposited by magnetron sputtering on a highly porous surface of silicon etched by the metal-assisted etching method (MAE) for texturing as nano and microwires. The homogeneity of the ITO layer and the degree of coverage of the silicon wires were assessed using electron microscopy imaging techniques. The quality of the deposited layer was specified, and problems related to both the presence of a porous substrate and the deposition method were determined. The presence of a characteristic structure of the deposited ITO layer resembling a "match" in shape was demonstrated. Due to the specificity of the porous layer of silicon wires, the ITO layer should not exceed 80 nm. Additionally, to avoid differences in ITO thickness at the top and base of the silicon wire, the layer should be no thicker than 40 nm for the given deposition parameters.