63Ni schottky barrier nuclear battery of 4H-SiC

The design, fabrication, and testing of a 4H-SiC Schottky betavoltaic nuclear battery based on MEMS fabrication technology are presented in this paper. It uses a Schottky diode with an active area of 3.14 mm2 to collect the charge from a 4 mCi/cm263Ni source. Some of the critical steps in process integration for fabricating silicon carbide-based Schottky diode were addressed. A prototype of this battery was fabricated and tested under the illumination of the 63Ni source with an activity of 0.12 mCi. An open circuit voltage (VOC) of 0.27 V and a short circuit current density (JSC) of 25.57 nA/cm2 are measured. The maximum output power density (Pmax) of 4.08 nW/cm2 and power conversion efficiency (η) of 1.01% is obtained. The performance of this battery is expected to be significantly improved by using larger activity and optimizing the design and processing technology of the battery. By achieving comparable performance with previously constructed p-n or p-i-n junction energy conversion structures, the Schottky barrier diode proves to be a feasible approach to achieve practical betavoltaics. (author)