Abstract
A typical planar structure is the most feasible conceptual design of betavoltaic battery due to its simplicity. The self-absorption of beta source, however, causes a limitation to the geometrical efficiency. Herein, we tried to investigate the self-absorption event in Ni-63 beta source by changing the geometrical aspects and evaluated its effect on each layer of a 4H-SiC semiconductor as the radiation-electricity converter. The design configuration from previous literature was adopted and the model was developed using Monte Carlo N-Particle X (MCNPX) consists of radioisotope source, semiconductor, and also ohmic contacts. The energy of beta emission was adjusted to the actual Ni-63 beta spectra with an isotropic distribution of ejected particles. The average beta energy deposition degrades along with the addition of source mass thickness, but the n+ substrate has a unique result where a peak is observed at 0.1246 mg/cm2 due to the self-absorption effect. Furthermore, the rectangular surface area magnification gives a positive impact on the beta energy deposition up to 2.48% and the photon average energy deposition up to 137.21%. The results of average electron absorbed dose are consistent with Oldano-Pasquarelli semi-empirical theory of self-absorption in the beta source, where the upper layer receives a wider angular distribution of particles compared to the lower one, which corresponds to the counting geometrical coefficients.
Highlights
Nuclear microbattery has been extensively developed in the last decades to support cardiac pacemakers and other micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS)
In order to verify the reliability of MC simulation, we tried to evaluate the statistical error emerged from the beta energy deposition calculation for a different number of particle used in the simulation
We have investigated the self-absorption effect of Ni-63 beta source to the 4H-Silicon Carbide (SiC) (p+, n, n+) semiconductor cells with rectangular planar design from previous literature using Monte Carlo N-Particle X (MCNPX)
Summary
Nuclear microbattery has been extensively developed in the last decades to support cardiac pacemakers and other micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS). One of the major issues is how to manage a reliable safety of a high energy density source into a small package along with having an efficient device performance as ideal energy storage. It turns out to bring a noticeable impact on a betavoltaic device with a low beta energy radioactive material, such as Ni-63 or H-3 [2]. This behavior arises due to several factors, including the material density, the chemical compound, the structural parameter, the distribution of atoms, and the beta spectra of the material itself [3]. Related to its simplest chemical formation, the solid form of Ni-63 offers a less harmful and reliable safety of radioactive leakage to micro-battery package than H-3 which naturally exists in gaseous form
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