Russian Scientists Upgrade Nuclear Battery Design To Increase Power Output (sciencealert.com)

schwit1 shares a report from ScienceAlert: A team of Russian researchers have put a new spin on technology that uses the beta decay of a radioactive element to create differences in voltage. The devices are made of stacks of isotope of nickel-63 sandwiched between a pair of special semiconducting diodes called a Schottky barrier. This barrier keeps a current headed one way, a feature often used to turn alternating currents into direct ones. Finding that the optimal thickness of each layer was just 2 micrometers, the researchers were able to maximize the voltage produced by every gram of isotope.

Nickel-63 has a half-life of just over 100 years, which in an optimized system like this adds up to 3,300 milliwatt-hours of energy per gram: ten times the specific energy of your typical electrochemical cell. It's a significant step up from previous nickel-63 betavoltaic devices, and while it isn't quite enough to power your smart phone, it does bring it into a realm of being useful for a wide variety of tasks.

Comments

what's more scary

[religionofpeas]

I'd rather have a nuclear battery in a pacemaker that lasts a lifetime than having to deal with surgery every 10 years to replace a conventional one, risking infection and other complications.

The coolest part is it's not Radioactive to us.

[Grog6]

Nickel-63 is an artificial isotope, which means it has to be made; But, it only decays by beta decay, so a piece of foil (or a deposited schottky barrier) will prevent that from escaping.

Pu RTG's put out everything from alphas to heavy fission gammas and neutrons, so this is a gogolplex better from any radioactivity standpoint.

I hope this takes off; it all depends on what it costs to make a gram. A 3300mAh lithium battery is about $1 in quantity, but has a very limited lifetime.

Re:Why do we care about lifetime output over 100 y

[ShanghaiBill]

But after 25 years it'll only produce 70.7% of the output

The fraction of remaining power = exp(-t * ln(2)/100)

So after 25 years, it will be a 84%. It will be at 70.7% after 50 years. If that isn't enough, then just make the battery 40% bigger.