The characteristics investigation and calculation of a nanowire betavoltaic battery with a Ni-63 beta source using Geant4 and COMSOL

Zare Harati, ءMahnaz; Mowlavi, Ali Asghar; Fadaei, Fereshte

doi:10.24200/nst.2025.1851.2114

The characteristics investigation and calculation of a nanowire betavoltaic battery with a Ni-63 beta source using Geant4 and COMSOL

Articles in Press

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

ءMahnaz Zare Harati ¹

Ali Asghar Mowlavi ²

Fereshte Fadaei ³

¹ Department of Physics, ‎Payam Noor University, Mashhad, Iran

² Department of Physics, School of Sciences, Hakim Sabzevari University, Sabzevar, Iran.

³ Department of Physics, National University of Skills (NUS), Mashhad, Iran

10.24200/nst.2025.1851.2114

Abstract

In this study, to ensure accurate calculation of betavoltaic battery parameters, the accumulated energy deposition from the beta spectrum of a nickel-63 (⁶³Ni) source was simulated using the Geant4 toolkit for 10⁹ particles. Subsequently, the circuit parameters in a silicon semiconductor were calculated with COMSOL, considering an intrinsic impurity concentration of nᵢ = 1×10¹⁵ cm⁻³ and impurity concentrations Nd = 3.16×10¹⁶ cm⁻³ for n-type and Na = 1×10¹⁹ cm⁻³ for p-type regions. Simulations were performed at an activity level of 2.9 mCi to compare the results with theoretical models and to validate the methodology. The obtained values were 27.31 nA for the short-circuit current and 445.19 mV for the open-circuit voltage. Additional simulations were carried out for activity levels ranging from 0.1 to 10 mCi. From the obtained maximum output power values, it can be concluded that considering the battery geometry and the minimization of source self-absorption effects, the circuit parameters of nanowire-based betavoltaic batteries are enhanced compared with planar batteries at identical activity levels and it is anticipated that optimized nanowire geometries will progressively surpass the performance of current commercial planar betavoltaic batteries.

Keywords

Batavoltaic battery

Geant4 tool

COMSOL software

Silicon

Main Subjects