Research On Zinc Oxide For Energy Converting Material Of Nuclear Battery

Zinc Oxide is a hot topic in material science nowadays.It is a wide-bandgap semiconductor of the II-VI semiconductor group.This semiconductor has several favorable properties,including good transparency,high electron mobility,wide bandgap,radiation resistance so that Zn O a suitable candidate for space applications.In this paper,we pooled research results of the doping of Zn O,and use Zn O as energy converting material of betavoltaic battery,Nickel-63 and Promethium-147 as beta sources.By using MCNP5,we deal with the transmission,backscattering and energy deposition of monoelectrons in Zn O and other electrode materials;give the proper radioactivity of both sources and simulate the energy deposition ranges in Zn O material,for Nickel-63 source,the proper total radioactivity is 0.06 Ci;for Promethium-147 source,it will be 8 Ci.To match the energy deposition ranges and depletion depth,we find relationships among doping concentration,depletion depth and built-in potential based on recent researches.Finally we calculate electrical characteristics of Zn O based nuclear battery.For 0.06 Ci Nickel-63 source,an open circuit voltage of 1.58 V and a short circuit current of 0.00391 ?A are obtained,and converting efficiency reaches 4.12%;for 8 Ci Promethium-147 source,a short circuit current of 26.18 ?A is obtained the converting efficiency reaches 4.59%.Compared with Si C and Ga N,Zn O material has stronger radiation resistance ability and more economical.