A novel betavoltaic microbattery based on SWNTs thin film-silicon heterojunction

This paper reports a novel betavoltaic microbattery made up of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) thin film-silicon heterojunction. It's the first time that the nano-material, such as SWNTs here, is applied and plays the role of the energy conversion in the betavoltaic microbattery, including exciton generation, carriers collection and transportation. The device was designed and fabricated by very simple micromachining and solution-evaporation techniques. 3.3mCi/cm2 63Ni film was used as the radiation source. The I-V curves in the dark and under radiation were measured and the performance of the betavoltaic (BV) microbattery was extracted. The testing results prove that SWNTs film-Si heterojunction is promising for application in nuclear microbatteries. ? 2012 IEEE.EI