Another revolution in battery tech? Man, is it Friday already? Look how time flies…
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Time zones
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UTC is only time.
It’s already Saturday, I was worried there won’t be the weekly fix of miracle battery news incoming. What a relief!
yeah, the battery mircacle day got moved from wednesday to saturday, to give miracle AIs the new prime slot on wednesdays
A 50 year, nuclear, 100 MICROwatt battery. But sure. Will def get approved.
100 microwatt is plenty for a lot of applications.
it ain’t replacing lithium on phones despite what the headline suggests tho.
Yup. Not for phones, but maybe something that doesn’t require much power, and would benefit from a very long battery life.
Maybe things like doorbells in situations where connecting them to mains electricity is too cumbersome a process.
Or fire alarms. I know of a couple of foolish people who, when the batteries died, they didn’t bother putting new ones in.
There are lots of possibilities for this type of battery.
http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2015/ph241/degraw2/
Medical devices is an obvious potential application for beta decay power. In the past, nuclear power sources were at a major size disadvantage and chemically powered cells can also provide very long service life at such small power draw.
So this definitely isn’t nearly as much of a new concept as the media is suggesting. The question is whether they have achieved a compact enough design to be preferential over competing chemically powered cells.
Another application would be cmos batteries for holding memory states. Using ssds in external enclosures is compelling to reduce the amount of time it takes to actually read and write a full drive. But ssds need to be powered every once in a while. If their internal power storage depletes they lose data. Backup ssd drives with an indefinite power source would definitely be a compelling option. I do however doubt if this technology could ever be cheap enough for such an application. The materials used seem rather expensive.
Is that even enough for a single LED to turn on?
Nickel 63 has a half life of 100 years. So that means you have safely store these things for 500 years after using them. Yeah, sounds totally fine.
Sounds very similar to the old Soviet pacemakers with radioisotope batteries. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, records about them got lost and so a bunch of people have been buried with pretty radioactive stuff in their chest. I don’t think we (as developed societies) are going to take that risk for some phone batteries…
I don’t think we (as developed societies) are going to take that risk for some phone batteries…
Not unless it’s profitable, at least…
Can I just store it in the river behind my house?
That’s bad for the environment. You have to send them down the garbage disposal first!
“it says can keep a device charged for 50 years.”
On a device that gets replaced every 1-3 years? 🤔
Better be user replaceable or that’s a lot of energy being stored in landfills.
Turning every landfill into a fission reactor is certainly one way to fix the landfill issue
Would be cool for long term, low power devices like sensors embedded in concrete in bridges and building structures for monitoring stresses.
Make devices BYOB (Bring Your Own Battery)
On a device that gets replaced every 1-3 years? 🤔
Who says the devices are going to be replaced every 1-3 years after we solve those problems like today’s non-replacable short-lasting batteries?
The battery tech isn’t the part that needs replacing. ;)
Smartphones are almost perfected now, the only “parts” that are making them obsolete after 2-3 years are batteries and operating system, both should be regulated to be changable and available for third-parties to make replacement.
Planned obsolescence.
100 microwatts.
Lol so the same as almost every other nuclear battery.
The article is really funny, because they talk about how this company’s innovation could be used in pacemakers. When they had betavoltaic pacemakers in the 1970s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betavoltaic_device
Here’s the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
A betavoltaic device (betavoltaic cell or betavoltaic battery) is a type of nuclear battery which generates electric current from beta particles (electrons) emitted from a radioactive source, using semiconductor junctions. A common source used is the hydrogen isotope tritium. Unlike most nuclear power sources which use nuclear radiation to generate heat which then is used to generate electricity, betavoltaic devices use a non-thermal conversion process, converting the electron-hole pairs produced by the ionization trail of beta particles traversing a semiconductor.Betavoltaic power sources (and the related technology of alphavoltaic power sources) are particularly well-suited to low-power electrical applications where long life of the energy source is needed, such as implantable medical devices or military and space applications.The innovation isn’t the product, it is the manufacturing. The cells in pacemakers had the housing of the pacemaker to protect from puncture.
These devices are meant to go in portable electronics so puncture safety is far more critical.
Honestly radioactive copper as a low volt lifetime battery is an interesting idea. It won’t live power a phone but it could charge it while inactive.
Good for camping where solar isn’t viable.
You’ve touched on a great point. The power provided is so low that solar can effectively provide equivalent power in nearly every application except one where the continuous operating environment is pitch black. 15x15mm for 0.0001w is small. For comparison, that’s about 1/6 of the power that falls on a 15x15mm patch in an indoor office (300lux environment with led lighting), out about the same as could be harvested by an efficient solar panel off the same size. You could collect a full days power from this battery (and store it in a 2mm thick li cell behind the panel) in roughly three minutes of sunshine or ten to fifteen minutes on an overcast day.
There certainly are applications where it would be useful, but most could just as easily be served by a small solar patch and lithium cell or super capacitor.
Wait a minute. Are you telling me that this sucker is nuclear?
It’s too late for mobile devices. Everybody expects a permanent internet connection, either WiFi or mobile internet, and therefore they all need much more than some microwatts.
However, medical implants seem appropriate.
The nuclear battery for a phone would be larger than the one in the article and likely paired with a capacitor battery. So the nuclear battery is constantly outputting 1w to a capacitor that stores energy that the device draws from.
Phones don’t use tons of power constantly and the standby power needs are fairly low.
Just calculate an average day’s energy example. Let’s say, you charge your 5000mAh battery once per day from “10%” 2,6V to “100%” 4,2V. That makes about 8Wh. So your average for the whole 24 hours is 0,3 W, or 300 mW or 300.000 μW.
This sounds too good to be true.
Give us this day thy daily revolutionary battery invented tech journalism hype bullshit
Once they have a one watt version, this would be good for trickle charging when you are not using the device, such as when you’re sleeping. But you would definitely need a lithium battery alongside it for normal use.
It would be great to have an ultra-low power mode for emergency calls.
Yes, hybrid batteries could work
Could be good for a LoRa node. But obviously won’t hit the market.
LoRa still needs about 100mW when transmitting, which is a thousand times more than what this can do…
Yes I’m talking about recharging a battery sitting next to this; agreed that it can’t power a node directly. In the U.K. we are actually allowed to transmit up to 500 mW on the ISM band (provided we adhere to the utilisation quota, which I think is 15%)
I can’t believe it’s not butter
