Today’s batteries face several obstacles. The first of them is the power they must provide and its relationship with the work demand of the devices: we ask a lot of them and the battery does not support the charge for long. Another section has to do with its useful life: They have a limited number of charge cycles, once completed their use is greatly restricted.
The obvious solution would be a very long-life battery that maintains sustained power and does not have to be recharged. That is precisely what a team of scientists from the University of Bristol has created: the world’s first nuclear power battery, using a radioactive isotope embedded in a diamond and could power small devices for thousands of years.
The nuclear battery uses the reaction of a diamond placed near a radioactive source to spontaneously produce electricity, says a statement from the university. No movement is required, neither linear or rotational. That means no energy is needed to move a magnet. through a coil or to rotate an armature within a magnetic field to produce electric current, as required in conventional power sources.
The diamond battery collects fast-moving electrons excited by radiation, similar to how solar energy uses photovoltaic cells to convert photons into electricity, the scientists said.
Scientists at the same university first demonstrated a prototype diamond battery, which used nickel-63 as a radioactive source, in 2017. In the new project, the team developed a battery made of radioactive carbon-14 isotopes embedded in diamonds. manufactured. The researchers chose carbon-14 as a source material because it emits short-range radiation, which is quickly absorbed by any solid materialmeaning there are no worries about radiation damage. Although carbon-14 would be dangerous to ingest or touch with bare hands, the diamond it contains prevents any short-range radiation from escaping.
“Diamond is the hardest substance known to man; There is literally nothing we can use that can offer more protection“explains Neil Fox, professor of energy materials at the University of Bristol and leader of the advance.
Carbon-14 occurs naturally, but is generated in abundant quantities in the graphite blocks used to control nuclear power plants. A single diamond nuclear battery containing 1 gram of carbon-14 could provide 15 joules of electricity per day. For comparison, a standard AA alkaline battery, which weighs about 20 grams, has an energy storage capacity of 700 joules per gram. It provides more energy than the nuclear diamond cell in the short term, but would be depleted within 24 hours.
On the other hand, the half-life of carbon-14 is 5,730 years.which means that it would take that long for the battery to drain to 50% of its energy. This is close to the age of the world’s oldest civilization. As another point of comparison, a spacecraft powered by a stack of carbon-14 diamond would reach Alpha Centauri (our nearest stellar neighbor, which is about 4.4 light years from Earth) long before its energy ran out. will deplete significantly.
The stack could be used in a variety of applications, including electronics, medical devices and space travel, the scientists said. Among the specific uses are They include x-ray machines and medical devices that need to run for a long time but require little power, such as pacemakers, and machines that operate in difficult and dangerous environments, such as oil and gas machinery at the bottom of the sea.
The battery could also be made small enough to power radio frequency tags to identify and track devices and payloads on Earth or in space.
The battery has no moving parts and therefore requires no maintenance or carbon emissions.