Your Next Battery May Be Nuclear

Jae Kwon, assistant professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering has developed a nuclear energy source that is smaller, lighter and more efficient. Reportedly Kwon’s radioisotope battery can provide power density that is six orders of magnitude higher than chemical batteries.

Kwon and MU research team members have been working on building a small nuclear battery, currently the size and thickness of a penny, intended to power various micro/nanoelectromechanical systems (M/NEMS). Although nuclear batteries can pose concerns, they are claimed to be safe. Nuclear power sources have already been safely powering a variety of devices, such as pace-makers, space satellites and underwater systems.

The innovation is not only in the battery’s size, but also in its semiconductor. Kwon’s battery uses a liquid semiconductor rather than a solid semiconductor. “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,” Kwon said. “By using a liquid semiconductor, we believe we can minimize that problem.”



[Source] Elektor via Electronics Lab