Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Atomic MEMS Battery has 50 Year Charge

Posted by michael on from the keeps-going-and-going dept.

notestein writes "Working for DARPA, a couple of Cornell researchers (Amil Lal, Hui Li ) have developed a battery that uses decaying nickel-63 to drive a flexing MEMS cantilever to generate electricity. They expect a production version to produce useful energy for at least 50 years."

1 of 70 comments (clear)

  1. Power supply? by Smidge204 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The article mentions attachign a magnet to the lever to generate electricity as it moves up and down.

    If the movement is caused by electric charges, why not have the lever contact an electrode, and funnel the electric charge off through whatever it is you're powering, and then back to the isotope film? Surely that would be a more efficient way to harness the power...

    Or, for that matter, why does the arm have to move at all?
    =Smidge=