A betavoltaic microbattery using zinc oxide nanowires under build in potential difference

This paper reports a betavotaic micro-battery using one-dimensional ZnO nanowires (1D ZNWs) under build-in potential for MEMS applications. 1D ZNWs were synthesized using a mixture of ZnO and graphite powder as source by a thermal evaporation in tube furnace at a temperature controlled to 800–1250 °C in mixed atmosphere of oxygen and inert gas. A 10 mCi of 63Ni/Ni source with 10×20 mm2 was assembled to ZNWs on Ti substrate to form sandwich type betavoltaic devices (Ni/63Ni/ZNWs/Ti). By I-V measurements, the betavoltaic devices exhibit a significant effective energy conversion efficiency of 27.92% with open-circuit voltage of 2.74 V and short-circuit current of 18.4 nA, which indicates that 1D ZNWs is a high-potential for developing betavoltaic batteries due to its wide band gap and one-dimensional nanostructures.