Demonstration of a 4H SiC Betavoltaic Cell

By M. Chandrashekhar, C. Thomas, Hui Li, M. Spencer, A. Lal. 2006

175 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A betavoltaic cell in 4H SiC is demonstrated. An abrupt p-n diode structure was used to collect the charge from a 1mCi Ni-63 source. An open circuit voltage of 0.95V and a short circuit current density of 8.8 nA/cm2 were measured in a single p-n junction. An efficiency of 3.7% was obtained. A simple photovoltaic type model was used to explain the results. Good correspondence with the model was obtained. Fill factor and backscattering effects were included. Efficiency was limited by edge recombination and poor fill factor.

Subfields: Materials Chemistry, Nuclear Energy and Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f13ac447c3b99a2cd49007e2114cd304a34784ee