Russian scientists have developed a large-capacity nuclear battery based on nickel-63, which can last for more than a hundred years

　　 Although lithium battery technology has become ubiquitous in people's daily lives, it seems that it has gradually approached the bottleneck in terms of energy density improvement. In order to achieve the goal of "replace the battery once in decades", scientists began to focus on the development of new nuclear batteries, but the energy density of the current prototype device is low, and there is still a long way to go. The good news is that Russian researchers have just developed a new nickel-63-based nuclear battery design, which has a higher energy density than ordinary commercially available batteries.

　　 Since any dissipated nuclear material may remain in the environment for decades (or even centuries) of dangerous radiation, nuclear power has always been extremely controversial.

　　 But based on the same reasoning, if we can make proper use of this feature, we can let the nuclear power device release energy slowly and continuously:

　　"Some nuclear batteries are based on the principle of ‘betavoltaics’. The radioactive source in the device attenuates and emits beta particles (electrons and positrons).

　　 When they interact with the semiconductor layer, they can generate current. Unfortunately, although these batteries can continue to provide energy for a long time, the first power density also means that there can only be a long flow of water. "

　　 provides relatively low energy for a long time, making nuclear power sources more suitable for applications where it is difficult to replace batteries (such as implanted devices such as spacecraft or pacemakers).

In the past few years, we have also seen a kind of'strontium-based' (strontium-based), which can split water molecules to generate electricity; and another kind of'NanoTritium' battery with a lifespan of up to 20 years .

　　 However, the new nuclear battery jointly developed by the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), the Institute of Superhard and New Carbon Materials Technology (TISNCM), and the National University of Science and Technology MISIS, uses a nickel-63-based design.

　　 The half-life of the radioisotope exceeds 100 years. The research team designed a new layout to increase the power density of the battery. They determined that if it is wrapped in a 10μm thick sandwich structure, the most effective layer thickness of nickel-63 is 2μm.

　　 In their prototype, they included 200 such ‘diamond energy converters’ and achieved 1μW output power. The converted energy density is 10μW/cm³, which means it can provide power for a modern pacemaker.

　　 Considering the half-life of nickel-63, the nuclear battery has an energy density of 3300mWh/g, which is more than 10 times that of traditional chemical batteries.

　　 In addition, researchers have developed a more efficient method that can mass-produce thin diamond layers with minimal loss. Although the production of nickel-63 may be tricky to a large extent, the team is confident of industrial-scale production in 10 years.

　　 In the future, the team plans to continue to improve the design of nuclear batteries and has identified some methods to increase battery power. These include enriching nickel-63, changing the structure of diamond converters, and giving these converters more surface area.