Researchers Create Nuclear Battery Which Last 12 Years (from ATSNN)

news.yahoo.com
A new type of battery based on radioactive decay of nuclear material is 10 times more powerful than similar prototypes and should last a decade or more without a charge. The longevity would make the battery ideal for use in pacemakers or other surgically implanted devices, developers say, or it might power spacecraft or deep-sea probes. You might also find these nuclear batteries running sensors and other small devices in your home in a few years.

The batteries are being developed at University of Rochester and the technology has been licensed by BetaBatt Inc. The technology, called betavoltaics, uses a silicon wafer to capture electrons emitted by a radioactive gas, such as tritium. It is similar to the mechanics of converting sunlight into electricity in a solar panel.

Betavoltaics has previously been unable to match solar-cell efficiency because when the gas decays, its electrons shoot out in all directions, causing many of them to be lost. Electrical engineers took the flat silicon surface, where the electrons are captured and converted to a current, and turned it into a 3-D surface by adding deep pits. Each pit is about one micron wide. That's four ten-thousandths of an inch. They're more than 40 microns deep.




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