Tired of cellphones and other electronic gadgets that run out of juice too quickly? Then you can happily look forward to further developments from the lab of researcher Jae Wan Kwon, who has developed a long-lasting nuclear battery the size and thickness of a penny. In time, Kwon hopes to get the size down so that the battery is no thicker than a human hair.
The batteries pose no danger of a nuclear meltdown, Kwon notes. Although nuclear batteries generate electricity from atomic energy like nuclear reactors, they don’t use a chain reaction, instead using the emissions from a radioactive isotope to generate electricity [Gizmag]. As the isotope naturally decays, the charged particles released can be used to create an electrical current. Nuclear batteries, which hold their charges for years, are already used in some specialty fields. For example, they’re used to power spacecraft that are voyaging too far from the sun to run on solar panels, and also in pacemakers, since changing a battery inside the body would be rather inconvenient. But the existing batteries are large and expensive.
In the study, published in Applied Physics Letters, the researchers explain that they cut down on the battery’s size by changing some materials. “The critical part of using a radioactive battery is that when you harvest the energy, part of the radiation energy can damage the lattice structure of the solid semiconductor,” Kwon said. “By using a liquid semiconductor, we believe we can minimize that problem” [Gizmag]. Usually, the batteries have to be made large enough to withstand the damage for the duration of the isotope’s decay, but the new design allows the battery to be much tinier.
The inventors developed the battery in an attempt to scale down power sources for the tiny devices that fall under the category of micro- and nano-electromechanical systems…. The means to power such devices has been a subject of study as vigorous as the development of the devices themselves [BBC News]. For the moment, the battery also delivers only a micro- or nano-sized energy burst, but Kwon and his colleagues are working on it.
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Image: Jae Wan Kwon, et al.
October 12th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
What kind of nuclear material is being used? Is it plutonium, radium, uranium, thorium… These kinds of things matter when writing a science piece don’t they?
October 12th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
Hmmmm . . . no mention of the ‘W’ word then ?
As in ‘ Waste ‘.
Perhaps we haven’t already got enough problems with heavy metals from batteries contaminating landfill sites for many hundreds of years to come ?
Why not up the odds and dump millions of dead nuke-batts too ?
Our descendants will no doubt be amused to look back on our childish and tenuous grip on reality and responsibility ( after they’ve cleaned up the mess ).
October 12th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
torres: No mention of what this particular one uses as an isotope but a similar device developed a few years ago used nickel-63.
October 12th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
Martin: A mention of the ‘W’ word in this article might have been a speculation as to how they may minimize battery waste. Imagine a day in the not so distant future when your digital camera can take pictures of another galaxy while you’re driving with it in your hand. And it doesn’t use disposable, wasteful batteries or rechargeable ones that have to be replaced every couple of years or less. It uses nuclear power! You never have to mess with the battery once you get it. True, once you get a new camera and toss the old one out, something would have to be done with its radioactive components. But we ought to be good enough at recycling by then to manage, or at least scan the trash for radioactivity and quarantine nuclear trash.
October 12th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
When the battery runs out, it will no longer be radioactive, or at least much nearer to a stable state and thus much less radioactive. We’re not talking U-238 batteriess.
October 12th, 2009 at 9:05 pm
Two points…
One is that the material is degrading whether we take advantage of it or not. The other is that we usually only toss something when it is of no easily obtainable use. It’s easy to imagine that even if you toss the device that you would remove and keep a battery with a year or more’s life in it…
October 13th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
Hey! does this mean its possible to construct radiation “solar panels” and stick ‘em onto nuclear waste, thereby rendering nuclear waste a good thing?
October 13th, 2009 at 9:25 pm
Does that last comment even remotely apply to this discussion, much less make any sense??
October 14th, 2009 at 5:45 am
i think what roy was trying to say was,
“can we do the same thing w the radiation coming off of nuclear waste?”
i’d like to know myself
October 14th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
Irradiated food was a way to use spent tubes for profit, at thed cost of consumer health. Flouride was brought to us by Aluminum companies tired of throwing away their dust, now they pollute our drinking water with it.
At least a dump full of glowing pennies might ennervate some bacteria to like the taste of plastic bottles and foam cups.
October 14th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
Carter, if there is one thing I hate more than a distracted driver, its a cancerous camera.
October 14th, 2009 at 8:50 pm
Hmmm. I love the idea of these really small batteries, but to reduce it to the size of a human hair? How will I be able to find it or handle it. Emerging new energy technology is mind boggling.
October 16th, 2009 at 1:20 am
What about using this technology on a larger scale, like running your car on them or powering your home? Would be nice not to fill your car up for 20 years or so.