JOURNAL OF MICROELECTROMECHANICAL SYSTEMS, VOL. 20, NO.

3, JUNE 2011 685

A Micro Nuclear Battery Based on SiC

Schottky Barrier Diode
Da-Yong Qiao, Xue-Jiao Chen, Yong Ren, and Wei-Zheng Yuan

AbstractBased on the betavoltaic and alphavoltaic effects,

a 4H-SiC micronuclear battery was demonstrated. A Schottky
barrier diode, in place of the previously used p-n junction diode,
was utilized for carrier separation. A theoretical model was de-
rived to predict the output electrical power. Using beta radioiso-
tope 63 Ni and alpha radioisotope 241 Am as the radiation sources,
the micro nuclear battery was tested and proved to be effective
to transfer decay energy into electrical power. The experimental
results show that the theoretical model can basically predict the
performance of the micronuclear battery. Although the energy
conversion efficiencies under illumination of 63 Ni and 241 Am are
only 0.5% and 0.1% at current status, an improvement by an
order of magnitude can be expected if the doping concentration of
the epilayer can be decreased to the optimal value. [2010-0174]
Index TermsBetavoltaic, micro nuclear batteries, Schottky
barrier diode, silicon carbide.

I. I NTRODUCTION
Fig. 1. Schematics of the physical structure and the energy band diagram of a

A LTHOUGH various types of devices have been devel-

oped on the micro- and nanoscales, similar scaling seems
difficult for power sources. The use of conventional batteries
SiC Schottky diode under illumination.

bandgap semiconductors, such as SiC, InGaP, and GaN, have

for most micro and nano devices results in bulky systems and
frequent recharging [1]. Micro nuclear batteries employing p-n
junctions to produce electrical power from the decay energy of
radioisotopes have been extensively researched [2][7]. As the
radiation particles penetrate into the p-n junction, they decel-
erate and give up their energy by creating electronhole pairs
in the semiconductor. These electronhole pairs are collected
by the p-n junction and are converted into useful electricity
just like a solar cell. Due to the higher energy densities and
longer lifetimes of radioisotopes compared with chemical fuels,
micro nuclear batteries are very attractive for MEMS applica-
tions, particularly for long-term applications, such as space and
undersea explorations, implanted biomedical microdevices, and
sensor networks for environmental monitoring.
Micro nuclear batteries based on silicon p-n junctions have
been constructed by using soft emitters, such as 63 Ni, 3 H,
and 147 Pm. In order to use higher activity emitters with higher
energy, p-n junctions made of more radiation-tolerant and wider
Manuscript received June 21, 2010; revised January 24, 2011; accepted
February 27, 2011. Date of publication April 15, 2011; date of current version
June 2, 2011. This work was supported in part by the National High Technology
Research and Development Program of China under Grant 2009AA04Z318 and
in part by the Program for the New Century Excellent Talents in University,
Ministry of Education of China, under Grant NCET-10-0075. Subject Editor
D.-I. Cho.
The authors are with the Micro and Nano Electromechanical Systems
Laboratory, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xian 710072, China
(e-mail: chenxuejiao@mail.nwpu.edu.cn).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JMEMS.2011.2127448
also been tried to generate more power [7][10].
In this paper, instead of p-n junctions, the use of metal-
SiC Schottky barrier diodes for carrier separation is proposed
to produce micro nuclear batteries. A theoretical model was
derived to predict the electrical performance. To validate the
idea, a battery prototype was fabricated and radiation tests were
carried out under illumination of both low-energy emitter
63
Ni and high-energy emitter 241 Am. The feasibility of using
micro nuclear battery as an onboard power source for MEMS
was finally analyzed.
II. P RINCIPLE OF C ARRIER S EPARATION BASED ON
S CHOTTKY BARRIER D IODE
The physical structure and the energy band diagram of a
Schottky barrier diode under illumination are shown in Fig. 1.
The Schottky barrier diode consists of the Schottky electrode,
the lightly doped n-type epilayer, the highly doped n-type
substrate, and the backside ohmic contact. The radiation par-
ticles penetrate the Schottky electrode and pass into the n-type
epilayer, creating electronhole pairs. The electrons and holes
created are then collected in and around the depletion region
and separated by the build-in potential, giving rise to an electri-
cal current.
In Fig. 1, B , i , and wd represent the barrier height, build-in
potential, and depletion width, respectively. For the n-type SiC,
the barrier height is obtained from
B = M (1)

1057-7157/$26.00 2011 IEEE

686 JOURNAL OF MICROELECTROMECHANICAL SYSTEMS, VOL. 20, NO. 3, JUNE 2011

where M is the work function of the Schottky metal and TABLE I

M ATERIAL PARAMETERS OF THE 4H-SiC S CHOTTKY BARRIER
is the electron affinity. The build-in potential can be deter- D IODE U SING Ni AS S CHOTTKY M ETAL
mined by
NC
i = B Vt ln (2)
ND
where Vt , with a value of 0.0259, is the thermal voltage, NC
is the effective density of states in the conduction band of SiC,
and ND is the doping concentration of the SiC epilayer.
The short-circuit current density JS consists of depletion-
region current JD and substrate-region current JN , which can
be expressed as [11]
Eavg
JS = JD + JN = ze (1 + 2 ) (3)
Epair
where
metal penetration coefficient, ranging from
0 to 1; III. T HEORETICAL C ALCULATION OF THE BATTERY
z decay mode coefficient, 1 for beta radiation and P ERFORMANCE
2 for alpha radiation; By using Ni as the Schottky metal, the electrical performance
activity density of radioisotopes; of the micro nuclear battery was predicted theoretically by (3).
e charge of an electron (1.60 1019 C); The material parameters used in the calculation are listed in
Eavg average energy of radioisotope; Table I.
Epair energy required to create an electronhole pair Before predicting the performance of the micro nuclear bat-
(7.78 eV for 4H-SiC); tery, the self-absorption of the radiation source and the Schottky
1 and 2 current contribution factors of the depletion and metal should be considered.
epilayer regions, respectively. For radiation source, there are two kinds of activities that can
They can be further calculated as be used: actual activity and apparent activity. The actual activ-
ity, namely the inherent activity, is the product of the weight
1 =1 exp(wd /La ) (4)
  and the specific activity of the given isotope. The apparent
    exp L
Lp La Lwd Lp wd La activity measured by the radiometer is the effective activity.
2 = 2 coth exp
La L2p Lp La La Lwd
sinh L Due to the self-absorption, the apparent activity is lower than
p
the actual one, which means a part of the radiation energy is
(5) consumed by the radiation source itself. Because the energy
loss caused by self-absorption of the radioisotope is irrelevant
where La is the stopping range of the radiation particles, Lp is
to the structural design of the Schottky diode, it should be
the diffusion length of minority carrier in the n-type epilayer,
excluded from the conversion efficiency calculation. Therefore,
and L is the thickness of the n-type epilayer.
only apparent activity is employed in the calculation.
The open-circuit voltage can be obtained by the Richardson
Based on the betavoltaic and alphavoltaic effects of Schottky
equation
  diodes, when the particles penetrate into the Schottky metal,
JS it will result in the energy degradation, particularly for
VOC = nVt ln 1 + (6)
J0 particles. A model of a SiC substrate coated with Ni with a
where n denotes an ideal factor and J0 is the reverse saturation thickness of 010 m was established. The ranges of the
current density given by particles in the model were simulated by T RIM , a tool for
simulating the range of particles in solids, and the achieved
J0 = A T 2 exp(B /Vt ) (7) result is shown in Fig. 2. When the thickness of Ni is 200 nm,
just as designed in this paper, the range is 17.9 m, decreasing
where A is the effective Richardson constant and T is the by 1.1% compared with the range of 18.1 m in the bare SiC
absolute temperature. without Ni. Hence, the self-absorption in the Schottky metal
According to (1), (3), and (6), the open-circuit voltage VOC with a thickness of 200 nm could be left out of consideration.
is positively related to the work function of the Schottky metal. A low-energy emitter 63 Ni and a high-energy emitter
Therefore, metals with large work functions should be chosen 241
Am were employed as the radioisotopes in the calculations.
as the Schottky metal. The characteristics of these two radioisotopes are given in
The depletion-region width wd is given by Table II. These calculations were performed with the apparent

activity density of 1 mCi cm2 . Fig. 3 shows the predicted
2s i
wd = (8) short-circuit current density, open-circuit voltage, output power
eND
density, and energy conversion efficiency as a function of the
where s is the dielectric constant of SiC. epilayer doping concentration. The output power density is
QIAO et al.: MICRO NUCLEAR BATTERY BASED ON SiC SCHOTTKY BARRIER DIODE 687

Fig. 2. Relationship between range of particles and the thickness of the

Schottky metal.

TABLE II
R ADIOISOTOPE P ROPERTIES OF 63 Ni AND 241 Am

calculated by multiplying the product of short-circuit current

density and open-circuit voltage with a fill factor (FF) of 0.4.
The calculation results indicate two things:
1) The theoretical output power increases sublinearly with
the decreasing ND , saturating at a specific value of ND .
For the n-type SiC, due to the poor minority carrier
diffusion length (about 1 m), it is difficult to get effective
collection from the carrier diffusion outside the depletion
region. It is desirable for most of the electronhole pairs
to occur inside the depletion region. According to (8),
decreasing ND will increase the depletion width and
thus increase the number of electronhole pairs generated
inside the depletion region. The value of ND where the
output power reaches the saturating point is also the case
where the depletion-region width matches the average
penetration depth of the radiation particles.
2) With constant activity density of radioisotopes, the iso-
tope with higher energy will generate more power, corre-
spondingly generating more electronhole pairs.

IV. FABRICATION OF S CHOTTKY BARRIER D IODES

Highly doped (5 1018 cm3 ) n-type 8 -off-axis 4H-SiC
(0001) substrates commercially available from Cree, Inc. were
utilized to fabricate the Schottky diodes. After the epitaxial
growth of the 5-m lightly doped (6 10 cm3 ) n-type epi-
layer, a backside Ni(450 nm)/Pt(50 nm)/Cr(50 nm)/Au(200 nm)
contact was formed and then followed by the rapid thermal
annealing in N2 ambient at 1000 C for 2 min to form ohmic
contact. The ultimate contact resistivity measured by the trans-
Fig. 3. Predicted (a) short-circuit current density, (b) open-circuit voltage,
(c) output power density, and (d) conversion efficiency as a function of the
epilayer doping concentration.
mission line method is 4 105 cm2 . E-beam evaporation
was utilized to deposit a 200-nm Ni as the Schottky metal. To
facilitate wire bonding and probe tests, Au with a thickness of
688
Fig. 4. (a) Circular structure and (b) cross-sectional illustration of Schottky
barrier diode.
Fig. 5. Dark IV characteristic of the Schottky barrier diode with a diameter
of 2000 m.
200 nm was deposited on the 30-nm Cr adhesion layer. The
designed Schottky barrier diode has a circular geometry with a
diameter of 2000 m, as shown in Fig. 4(a). Fig. 4(b) shows
its cross-sectional illustration. Depletion width was experimen-
tally determined using capacitancevoltage measurements, and
the result is about 1.46 m, basically in agreement with the
predicted value (1.26 m) by (8).
Currentvoltage (IV ) tests were performed using the Keith-
ley 4200 semiconductor characterization system, and the leak-
age currents of the Schottky barrier diodes were extracted from
the IV curves. Fig. 5 shows the dark forward IV curve of a
typical fabricated diode. The reverse saturation current density
J0 was 1015 A cm2 with the ideal factor n of 1.3. All the
diodes show the similar trend.
JOURNAL OF MICROELECTROMECHANICAL SYSTEMS, VOL. 20, NO. 3, JUNE 2011
Fig. 6. IV characteristics of the tested diode under (a) 63 Ni and (b) 241 Am
illuminations.
V. T ESTING U NDER I LLUMINATION
For radiation measurements, 63 Ni and 241 Am with the appar-
ent activity densities of 4 and 0.018 mCi cm2 , respectively,
were used as the radiation sources. The output electrical power
density of the radiation source (Psource ) can be calculated by
Psource = 3.7 1010 zeEavg . (9)
As a result, the obtained output power densities of the 63 Ni
and 241 Am sources are 405 and 1172 nW cm2 , respectively.
The IV characteristics of the tested Schottky barrier diode
under 63 Ni and 241 Am illuminations are shown in Fig. 6.
For the case of 63 Ni, the device exhibited a short-circuit
current (ISC ) of 434 pA and an open-circuit voltage (VOC )
of 0.26 V. With a device area of 3.14 102 cm2 , the short-
circuit current density (JSC ) was 13.82 nA cm2 . The current
and voltage at the peak are termed Ip and Vp , respectively,
which were extracted from the measured IV characteristics
by maximizing the product of current and voltage. Ultimately,
the achieved peak power density (Pout ) of the device was
4.85 nW cm2 at 338 pA (Ip ) and 0.19 V (Vp ), leading to
an FF of 0.57.
On the other hand, for the 241 Am, the device exhibited a
short-circuit current (ISC ) of 235 pA and an open-circuit volt-
age (VOC ) of 0.25 V. With a device area of 3.14 102 cm2 ,
the short-circuit current density (JSC ) was 7.48 nA cm2 .
QIAO et al.: MICRO NUCLEAR BATTERY BASED ON SiC SCHOTTKY BARRIER DIODE 689

TABLE III
M EASURED P ERFORMANCES OF THE FABRICATED
M ICRO N UCLEAR BATTERY

The extracted peak power density (Pout ) of the device was

1.27 nW cm2 at 218 pA (Ip ) and 0.18 V (Vp ), leading to
an FF of 0.68.
The power conversion efficiency of the betavoltaic nuclear
battery can be determined by
VOC JSC Vp Jp
= FF = . (10)
Psource Psource
Using the extracted Vp and Jp , the conversion efficiencies
were obtained. The measured performances of the fabricated
micro nuclear battery are listed in Table III.
After a two-month performance testing illuminated under
63
Ni, no degradation in the open-circuit voltage or the short-
circuit current was observed, indicating that radiation damage Fig. 7. Degradation percentage of (a) short-circuit current and (b) open-circuit
voltage as the time progresses.
will not occur inside the Schottky barrier diode.
For the illumination under the emitter 241 Am, performance TABLE IV
degradation in the short-circuit current was observed at the ini- M EASURED AND P REDICTED S HORT-C IRCUIT C URRENTS I LLUMINATED
BY R ADIOISOTOPES W ITH AN ACTIVITY D ENSITY OF 1 mCi cm2
tial 24 h, but the degradation percentage proved to be a function
of the illumination time. It will decrease as the time progresses.
After 24 h, no further degradation was obviously observed.
Finally, the stable output of the short-circuit current is 35%
of the original value. The open-circuit voltage kept constant
during the illumination test and proved to be independent of
the radiation damage. Fig. 7(a) and (b) shows the degradation
percentage of the short-circuit current and open-circuit voltage
as a function of the time when illuminated under 241 Am. activity density used in tests. For the 63 Ni source, the factor
According to the experimental results, despite the degra- is 0.25, and for 241 Am, the factor is 55.6. The predicted and
dation of the battery performance caused by the alphavoltaic experimental determined short-circuit currents are compared
effect appears, it still shows better performance than that of the in Table IV.
betavoltaic battery. The comparison in Table IV proves that the theoretical model
When using a high-energy alpha emitter, the wide-bandgap can basically predict the performances of the micro nuclear
semiconductor material SiC can achieve a longer lifetime, while battery. The deviation from the experimental results is possibly
the lifetime of a similar device based on Si is only 10 min, as because of the fact that the actual metal penetration coefficient
observed from our previous research. cannot reach 1 in the radiation test and that the energy loss
Because the activity density of radiation sources used in the caused by self-absorption in the metal layer is different for
radiation test is not 1 mCi cm2 as used in the theoretical and particles. According to the theoretical model, there is
calculation, the measured nuclear battery performances should great potential to increase the output power and the conversion
be multiplied by a factor in order to make a comparison between efficiency of the micro nuclear battery if the epilayer doping
the prediction and the tests. According to (3), the short-circuit concentration can be decreased. If the epilayer concentration
current density JS is in direct proportion to the radioisotope can be decreased from 6 1014 cm3 to 1011 cm3 , the output
activity density. For the short-circuit current comparison, the power can be increased by an order of magnitude. A power
factor can be determined by dividing 1 mCi cm2 by the actual density on the order of microwatts per square centimeter and
690 JOURNAL OF MICROELECTROMECHANICAL SYSTEMS, VOL. 20, NO. 3, JUNE 2011
conversion efficiency over 1% can be expected when illumi-
nated by 241 Am.
VI. A PPLICATION P OTENTIAL FOR MEMS AS
O NBOARD P OWER
The micro nuclear battery based on the SiC Schottky barrier
diode could be readily fabricated in microscale, which is some-
what difficult for the conventional chemical battery. It could
provide power ranging from nanowatts to microwatts for an
extremely long period of time, depending on the half-life of
radioisotopes. It could also withstand harsh environments, such
as high temperature and cosmic radiation. All these properties
make them appealing for MEMS applications.
Among existing MEMS devices, one possible application is
the sensor network. Next-generation micro sensor devices that
consume on the order of 2 W2 mW are under development
for wireless sensing [12]. To power such a sensor device,
microbatteries with power densities ranging from several mi-
crowatts per square centimeter to several milliwatts per square
centimeter are required. According to the theoretical model, our
micro nuclear battery is able to provide a power density of about
1 W cm2 when illuminated by a 1-mCi cm2 emitter
241
Am. By optimizing the Schottky barrier diode structure and
connecting several micro nuclear batteries in series or shunt
connections, power density can be increased to match the power
density needed by the next-generation sensor network.
VII. C ONCLUSION
The 4H-SiC Schottky barrier diode was proposed and proved
to be a feasible carrier separation structure to convert the
decay energy into electrical power. Theoretical calculation and
illumination tests were performed to evaluate the performances
of this micro nuclear battery. Although output power density at
present is only on the order of nanowatts per square centimeter,
an improvement by an order of magnitude can be expected, and
it is possible to find applications as MEMS onboard power.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank H. Guo, a staff member at
Xidian University of China, and H. Zhang, a staff member at
China Institute of Atomic Energy.
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Da-Yong Qiao was born in 1977. He received
the Ph.D. degree from Northwestern Polytechnical
University, Xian, China, in 2008.
He is currently an Associate Professor at North-
western Polytechnical University. His research inter-
ests include integrated design methods for MEMS,
micro- and nanomanufacturing technologies, optical
MEMS, microenergy MEMS, etc.
Xue-Jiao Chen was born in 1987. She is currently
working toward the M.S. degree in the Micro and
Nano Electromechnical Systems Laboratory, North-
western Polytechnical University, Xian, China.
Her research interests include microenergy
MEMS and micro- and nanomanufacturing
technologies.
Yong Ren was born in 1987. He is currently working
toward the M.S. degree in the Micro and Nano
Electromechnical Systems Laboratory, Northwestern
Polytechnical University, Xian, China.
His research interests include microenergy MEMS
and micro- and nanomanufacturing technologies.
Wei-Zheng Yuan was born in 1961. He received the
M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Northwestern Poly-
technical University (NPU), Xian, China, in 1986
and 1996, respectively.
He is currently the Director of the Micro and
Nano Electromechanical Systems Laboratory, NPU.
He was a Visiting Scholar at the Ecole Nationale
Suprieur de Mcaniques et des Microtechniques,
Besancon, France, the Manufacturing Engineering
and Engineering Management Department, City
University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, and with
the National Research Council of Canada. He authored the book Micro-
machine and Micromachining Fabrication Technology (Northwestern Poly-
technical University Press, 2000). His research fields are microfabrication
technologies, modeling and simulation of MEMS/NEMS, and intelligent
sensors.