A nuclear battery with a 50-year lifespan has been developed by China
Chinese startup Betavolt has unveiled a compact nuclear battery that can keep devices running for 50 years without recharging.
The development is based on nickel-63 and diamond semiconductors in a module smaller than a coin (15×15×5 mm). According to the manufacturer’s specifications, the battery can deliver 100 microwatts of power and a voltage of 3V.
The company assures that such a power source is safe for both humans and the environment: the case excludes radiation, and the nuclear elements will disintegrate after the expiration date. In addition, the development is able to work in the temperature range from -60°C to 120°C.
Betavolt says that working versions of the battery are undergoing full testing and are being prepared for series production in 2025.
It will be recalled that researchers from the University of Arkansas (USA) have developed a new non-linear scheme for obtaining clean energy. It works with the use of graphene. This was reported by Phys.org in August 2023.
The authors noted that when storage capacitors have an initial charge equal to zero, the circuit receives energy from the thermal medium to charge them.
“In general, obtaining useful work from random fluctuations in a system in thermal equilibrium was considered impossible for a long time. Back in the 1960s, the eminent American physicist Richard Feynman effectively stopped further research after declaring in a series of lectures that Brownian motion, or the thermal motion of atoms, could not do useful work,” the scientists say.
However, they proved that Feynman missed something very important. In particular, the fact that the thermal fluctuations of graphene, which stands alone, when connected to a circuit with diodes that have non-linear resistance and storage capacitors that produce useful work, charging the storage capacitors.
“Today, we are focused on building a device called the Graphene Energy Harvester (or GEH). GEH uses a negatively charged sheet of graphene suspended between two metal electrodes. When the graphene is flipped over, it induces a positive charge on the top electrode. When it flips down, it positively charges the bottom electrode, creating an alternating current. When the diodes are connected to each other, allowing current to flow in both directions, separate paths are provided in the circuit that create a pulsating DC current that does work on the load resistor,” the authors of the study added.
Previously, a water battery was created.