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Limit Efficiency of a Silicon Betavoltaic Battery with Tritium Source

An idealized design of a silicon betavoltaic battery with a tritium source is considered, in which a thin layer of tritiated silicon is sandwiched between two intrinsic silicon slabs of equal width, and the excess charge carriers are collected by thin interdigitated n(+) and p(+) electrodes. The opp...

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Autores principales: Evstigneev, Mykhaylo, Afkani, Mohammad, Sokolovskyi, Igor
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10673167/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/38004872
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mi14112015
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author Evstigneev, Mykhaylo
Afkani, Mohammad
Sokolovskyi, Igor
author_facet Evstigneev, Mykhaylo
Afkani, Mohammad
Sokolovskyi, Igor
author_sort Evstigneev, Mykhaylo
collection PubMed
description An idealized design of a silicon betavoltaic battery with a tritium source is considered, in which a thin layer of tritiated silicon is sandwiched between two intrinsic silicon slabs of equal width, and the excess charge carriers are collected by thin interdigitated n(+) and p(+) electrodes. The opposite sides of the device are covered with a reflecting coating to trap the photons produced in radiative recombination events. Due to photon recycling, radiative recombination is almost ineffective, so the Auger mechanism dominates. An analytical expression for the current–voltage curve is obtained, from which the main characteristics of the cell, namely, the open-circuit voltage, the fill factor, and the betaconversion efficiency, are found. The analytical results are shown to agree with the numerical ones with better than 0.1% accuracy. The optimal half-thickness of this device is found to be around 1.5 μm. The maximal efficiency increases logarithmically with the surface activity of the beta-source and has the representative value of 12.07% at 0.1 mCi/cm(2) and 14.13% at 10 mCi/cm(2).
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spelling pubmed-106731672023-10-29 Limit Efficiency of a Silicon Betavoltaic Battery with Tritium Source Evstigneev, Mykhaylo Afkani, Mohammad Sokolovskyi, Igor Micromachines (Basel) Article An idealized design of a silicon betavoltaic battery with a tritium source is considered, in which a thin layer of tritiated silicon is sandwiched between two intrinsic silicon slabs of equal width, and the excess charge carriers are collected by thin interdigitated n(+) and p(+) electrodes. The opposite sides of the device are covered with a reflecting coating to trap the photons produced in radiative recombination events. Due to photon recycling, radiative recombination is almost ineffective, so the Auger mechanism dominates. An analytical expression for the current–voltage curve is obtained, from which the main characteristics of the cell, namely, the open-circuit voltage, the fill factor, and the betaconversion efficiency, are found. The analytical results are shown to agree with the numerical ones with better than 0.1% accuracy. The optimal half-thickness of this device is found to be around 1.5 μm. The maximal efficiency increases logarithmically with the surface activity of the beta-source and has the representative value of 12.07% at 0.1 mCi/cm(2) and 14.13% at 10 mCi/cm(2). MDPI 2023-10-29 /pmc/articles/PMC10673167/ /pubmed/38004872 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mi14112015 Text en © 2023 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Evstigneev, Mykhaylo
Afkani, Mohammad
Sokolovskyi, Igor
Limit Efficiency of a Silicon Betavoltaic Battery with Tritium Source
title Limit Efficiency of a Silicon Betavoltaic Battery with Tritium Source
title_full Limit Efficiency of a Silicon Betavoltaic Battery with Tritium Source
title_fullStr Limit Efficiency of a Silicon Betavoltaic Battery with Tritium Source
title_full_unstemmed Limit Efficiency of a Silicon Betavoltaic Battery with Tritium Source
title_short Limit Efficiency of a Silicon Betavoltaic Battery with Tritium Source
title_sort limit efficiency of a silicon betavoltaic battery with tritium source
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10673167/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/38004872
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mi14112015
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