October 9 2009
US researchers have unveiled a new penny-sized "nuclear battery" which can retain almost a million times the power of conventional chemical batteries.
Developed by a team at the University of Missouri, the new battery produces energy from the process of decaying radioisotopes, which releases charged particles that can be harvested for an electrical current.
Nuclear batteries are already used in military and aerospace technology, although the equipment is typically a lot bigger than the tiny device created by the Missouri team.
The greater size is because current nuclear batteries use solid semiconductors for harvesting the particles, which can degrade over time, meaning that the batteries must be constructed large to cope with the damage.
Led by Jae Wan Kwon, the Missouri team have managed to use a liquid semiconductor in order to capture and utilise the decaying particles without them causing damage. Despite the use of radioactive materials, the batteries are completely safe under normal conditions.
Dr. Jae explained: "People hear the word 'nuclear' and think of something very dangerous. However, nuclear power sources have already been safely powering a variety of devices, such as pacemakers, space satellites and underwater systems.
"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. By using a liquid semiconductor, we believe we can minimise that problem."
Nuclear batteries are seen as an alluring prospect as they can provide energy for much longer periods than current technology, which is why they are favoured for space exploration craft.
In their research published in the Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry, the team estimate that despite the small size, the new batteries could "provide power density that is six orders of magnitude higher than chemical batteries".
US Team Unveil Tiny 'Nuclear Battery'
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