Study on betavoltaic battery with suspended 1.5 µm-Si thin film back-junction back-contact PN junction

IF 4.9 3区工程技术 Q2 ENGINEERING, ELECTRICAL & ELECTRONIC

Sensors and Actuators A-physical Pub Date : 2025-09-04 DOI:10.1016/j.sna.2025.117031

Bo Wu, Meng Wu, Jinwen Zhang

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Abstract

This paper investigated the structural and area influence on the fabrication yield and the characteristics of the diode and betavoltaic battery. Different structures and areas of the back-junction back-contact (BJBC) PN junction with suspended 1.5 µm-Si thin-film were prepared by microfabrication based on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrates. The samples were fixed and wire-bonded on a custom-designed-and-processed sample holder and PCB board on the SEM stage so that their betavoltaic battery performance was tested using high-energy electron beams to simulate the tritium source. Before splintered to chips, all devices on the 4-inch wafer maintained their structures well and exhibited good rectification characteristics. However, the larger area the suspended thin film was, the more severely it was damaged after splintering. The collection efficiency of radiation-generated carriers were enhanced by reducing collection electrode spacing and increasing the number of electrodes, thereby improving the battery performance, which proves the advantage of design flexibility in doping regions and electrode shapes in BJBC structures. The large device area made the reverse saturation current of the PN junction decreasing an order of magnitude and so resulted in the betavoltaic battery performance degradation. As a result, the optimal betavoltaic battery performance was achieved by 1.2 × 1.2 mm² area BJBC PN junction with the interdigitated structure of 10 µm-wide P⁺/N⁺ regions and 25 µm spacing, yielding I_sc = 0.729 µA, V_oc = 0.194 V, P_m = 84.1 nW, η = 1.09 %.

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悬浮式1.5µm-Si薄膜背结反接触PN结倍他伏打电池的研究

本文研究了结构和面积对二极管和倍他伏打电池的成品率和性能的影响。采用微加工技术，在绝缘体上硅（SOI）衬底上制备了具有悬浮1.5µm-Si薄膜的背结背接触（BJBC） PN结。在SEM平台上，将样品固定在定制设计和加工的样品支架和PCB板上，并用高能电子束模拟氚源来测试其倍他伏打电池的性能。在分裂成芯片之前，4英寸晶圆上的所有器件都保持了良好的结构，并表现出良好的整流特性。然而，悬浮薄膜的面积越大，劈裂后的损伤越严重。通过减小收集电极间距和增加电极数量来提高辐射生成载流子的收集效率，从而提高电池性能，这证明了BJBC结构中掺杂区域和电极形状设计灵活性的优势。较大的器件面积使PN结反向饱和电流减小了一个数量级，从而导致倍他伏打电池性能下降。结果,最佳betavoltaic电池性能达到1.2 ×  1.2平方毫米区域BJBC PN结的互相交叉结构10µN⁺地区和25米宽P⁺/ µm间距,收益率Isc = 0.729 µ,Voc = 0.194 V,点= 84.1 nW,η= 1.09 %。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Sensors and Actuators A-physical 工程技术-工程：电子与电气

CiteScore

8.10

自引率

6.50%

发文量

630

审稿时长

49 days

期刊介绍： Sensors and Actuators A: Physical brings together multidisciplinary interests in one journal entirely devoted to disseminating information on all aspects of research and development of solid-state devices for transducing physical signals. Sensors and Actuators A: Physical regularly publishes original papers, letters to the Editors and from time to time invited review articles within the following device areas: • Fundamentals and Physics, such as: classification of effects, physical effects, measurement theory, modelling of sensors, measurement standards, measurement errors, units and constants, time and frequency measurement. Modeling papers should bring new modeling techniques to the field and be supported by experimental results. • Materials and their Processing, such as: piezoelectric materials, polymers, metal oxides, III-V and II-VI semiconductors, thick and thin films, optical glass fibres, amorphous, polycrystalline and monocrystalline silicon. • Optoelectronic sensors, such as: photovoltaic diodes, photoconductors, photodiodes, phototransistors, positron-sensitive photodetectors, optoisolators, photodiode arrays, charge-coupled devices, light-emitting diodes, injection lasers and liquid-crystal displays. • Mechanical sensors, such as: metallic, thin-film and semiconductor strain gauges, diffused silicon pressure sensors, silicon accelerometers, solid-state displacement transducers, piezo junction devices, piezoelectric field-effect transducers (PiFETs), tunnel-diode strain sensors, surface acoustic wave devices, silicon micromechanical switches, solid-state flow meters and electronic flow controllers. Etc...