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From the article it seems to have only advantages. Is there any downside? Why shouldn't it be used in every portable electronics?
by cm2187 3y ago
From the article it seems to have only advantages. Is there any downside? Why shouldn't it be used in every portable electronics?
- dragontamer 3y agoRunning the math suggests 0.1 mW. Which... the specs of many uCs I play with can theoretically drop down to 100uA or less of current (especially if I have capacitors to store energy while the uC sleeps). But ugggh. This won't be easy to design around. A lot of capacitors will give you 10uA of leakage already. Assuming 3V uCs, that'd be 30uW of precious energy just in leakage current. I think most people would rather use a AA battery. Is it really that big of a deal to replace the AA batteries every 10 years?
- Sohcahtoa82 3y agoThese things are awful from both a size-to-power and weight-to-power ratio. In other words, any application where size or weight is an issue (nearly all consumer portable electronics such as laptops, phones, tablets, power tools, and especially cars), these won't be good enough. The last time I heard of a radioactive battery (btw, this concept is not new), I'm pretty sure someone did the math and found that you'd need one the size of a typical car battery just to get enough wattage to power a phone. To power a car, it'd have to be the size of a semi trailer. That said, their life is certainly huge. If size and weight isn't an issue, they can be an incredible boon, but I imagine at the scales I'm thinking of (like needing a few kilowatts to power a 5-person outpost somewhere), the cost ends up being the major factor.