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City labs has been studying the related applications of nuclear batteries. The company’s research director Larry Olsen designed the nuclear battery Betacel based on the promethium-147 element in the 1970s for use in pacemakers. But the problem with promethium-147 is that although it also belongs to beta decay, it will also release strong radiation gamma rays during the decay process, so Betacel needs to make a lot of space inside the battery to shield radiation. In the end, it gradually withdrew from the stage of history because of the “price ratio” inferior to lithium batteries.
City labs CEO Peter Cabauy said in an interview earlier that Betavolt battery technology is re-emerging because semiconductor materials have made great progress. “Early semiconductor materials were not enough to convert electrons from beta decay into usable current.”
Based on the advancement of semiconductor material technology, some companies around the world have also begun to aspire to commercialize nuclear batteries, and these “nuclear” companies have gradually surfaced.
The commercial model of nuclear batteries for civilian use
As the nuclear battery technology most likely to be commercialized at present, various countries in the world are conducting research on betavolt batteries. Because the technical threshold is relatively high, and there are fewer companies, the City labs mentioned above can be regarded as the “originator” in the tritium battery research industry.
Widetronix, another company that makes tritium batteries, has announced the manufacturing principle of the battery, which consists of a metal foil impregnated with tritium and a semiconductor silicon carbide sheet. Silicon carbide flakes can convert 30% of the particles hitting the metal foil into electric current. When Widetronix stacks the two into a package measuring one square centimeter and two tenths of a centimeter high, it is a tritium battery.
The basic principles of tritium batteries are roughly the same, but the materials and reaction methods are different, and there are some subtle differences.
, Author: Zhao Zi Xiao