4 ms·
New battery has life so long you may never have to recharge
- petard 1y agoThis reminds me of those break-through articles about using Scotch tape as mass storage medium.
- HPsquared 1y agoJust don't peel it, as the resulting X-rays will probably wipe it! https://www.technologyreview.com/2008/10/23/217918/x-rays-made-with-scotch-tape/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2008/10/23/217918/x-rays-ma...
- burnt-resistor 1y agoDirections unclear: made graphene instead - https://youtu.be/LwmxSjyd https://youtu.be/LwmxSjyd
- bravesoul2 1y agoDoes this involve a sharpie
- rexonaxib 1y ago[dead]
- pixelpoet 1y agoGreat, we can use them to store all that energy we'll get from our fusion reactors!
- benterix 1y agoActually, it can use some waste from our nuclear reactors.
- rbanffy 1y agoExcellent for all those applications where you need... Almost no power at all.
- RobotToaster 1y agoI get your point, but there's a surprising number of those.
- willvarfar 1y agoThe example given in the article was a pacemaker. I'm guessing there _are_ applications where you don't need a lot of power, but you do want it over a long time and without needing to charge or replace batteries. It's also easy to imagine places where, whilst power is available, there are manufacturing advantages in not needing to. For example it might make economic sense to have self-powered wirelessly-connected sensors on car bumpers just to avoid the manufacturing cost of wiring them all up?
- Am4TIfIsER0ppos 1y agoWireless sensors? I'm sure the engineers will see the ether works fine in a lab but as soon as you try it in the real world it vanishes.
- thebruce87m 1y agoWe already have wireless sensors in cars - tyre pressure monitors.
- crinkly 1y agoPacemakers need a hell of a lot of power for a short amount of time occasionally. To do that you need to store it in something which can be discharged quickly and is low impedance. Which is a capacitor. This thing generates so little power you couldn’t charge a capacitor up quickly enough or keep one charged with the leakage.
- 1y ago
- willvarfar 1y agoIt is easy to imagine a future where tiny nano-electronics are embedded into pretty much everything everywhere. The plants in the field that call for treatment at the first sign of insects or infection, for example.
- voidUpdate 1y agoSo what's the maximum voltage and current that you can pull from one?
- shakna 1y ago"an open-circuit voltage of 2.75 mV"
- barbegal 1y agoNot comparable to a real battery any time soon based on the paper https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2025/cc/d4cc05935b https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2025/cc/d4cc0... > The perovskite betavoltaic cell achieved impressive parameters, including a short-circuit current density of 15.01 nA cm−2, an open-circuit voltage of 2.75 mV, and an energy conversion efficiency of 1.83%, all of which represent significant improvements over previous works.
- mr_mitm 1y agoWill it ever be comparable to a "real" battery? The energy output has a clear upper limit. Are there materials that produce only beta particles at a high enough rate per gram that could power a cell phone with a half life of more than a few days?
- barbegal 1y agoAssuming you could get these to 10% efficiency (which is theoretically possible) and a phone needs 0.2W of energy to function then you would need a source capable of supplying 2W of energy (of which 1.8W would be dissipated as heat). The phone would be fairly hot all the time but 2W could be dissipated without it overheating in most environments. Strontium 90 generates 0.95 W/g so in theory a few grams of strontium 90 would be enough to power your phone for many decades (the half life is 28 years). But if someone were to accidentally put such a phone into an insulating material it might overheat and become a dangerous radioactive mess!
- close04 1y ago> and a phone needs 0.2W of energy to function For an arbitrary definition of "function". I don't think a modern phone would achieve a meaningful function at that level. The cellular modem alone blows past that budget many times over. Even an old rotary phone went over 1W. Apple's efficient 5G "C1" modem used in the iPhone 16e is still at ~0.7W. The Qualcomm models used in the iPhone 16 are 0.8-0.9W.
- 1y ago
- habibur 1y agoThese batteries provide milliwatt level power. Enough to power, maybe a clock circuit without display.
- bravesoul2 1y agoProbably good for the dark, remote, lots of space applications. E.g. a radio beacon near the poles.
- blueflow 1y agoMaximum wattage of the battery would also be maximum wattage of the radio signal.
- ColonelPhantom 1y agoWouldn't it be feasible to add a tiny battery or capacitor? Assuming the radio doesn't need to transmit continuously it can be powered via those which are then powered by the "forever battery".
- bravesoul2 1y agoYeah you'd need a lot of them. Instead if a AA battery maybe you need a truck's worth of this. But if it means you dont need to go back for a while...
- gpderetta 1y agoRTGs (radioisotope thermoelectric generator) are already in use for both deeps space and remote applications. Not sure how this differ. Maybe better efficiency? Still, why is it called a battery instead of a generator? Oh, maybe size as RTGs are bulky. edit: there have been very small RTGs for use in pacemakers. The difference is really that these are not thermal but use the beta flux directly.
- wongarsu 1y agoThe Soviet Union also had mass-produced RTGs for powering equipment in remote locations on earth, like light houses https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta-M https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta-M
- OneFriend2575 1y agoThis nuclear battery tech is wild. Tiny devices that could run for decades without a recharge changes the game for things like sensors, medical implants or space gear. Still early but if they improve the efficiency, it could seriously shift how we think about power.
- blitzar 1y agoTech bros love reinventing things from the 70's http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2015/ph241/degraw2/ http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2015/ph241/degraw2/
- adhamsalama 1y agoI feel like I've been reading news like this for over years, yet these breakthroughs never make it to market.
- cynicalsecurity 1y agoCtrl+F "nuclear" Nope. I'm fine with recharging my batteries every day, thank you very much. The least the society needs is nuclear waste thrown all over the place. People still didn't learn how to recycle regular batteries.
- blueflow 1y agoExcept from the name ("radioactivity", "nuclear") its not the same thing that killed people in chernobyl.
- nlitsme 1y agoi don't think you can 'recharge' a nuclear battery.
- blitzar 1y agoBombard it with radiation and transmute it to a decaying element
- gagan2020 1y agoThe Thing that the heading missed, "which could power small devices for decades"
- sevensor 1y agoHow does a cell like this work? Is it directly turning the flux of electrons from beta decay into usable current?
- incomingpain 1y agoThis one is beta, so yes direct conversion to current. ITs not a matter of alligator clips on left and right sides; and your internal wires need survive radiation and usually high heat.
- gglanzani 1y agoUnless you want to power a device with Microsoft Teams running on it
- grishka 1y agoDear battery technology claimant, Thank you for your submission of proposed new revolutionary battery technology. Your new technology claims to be superior to existing lithium-ion technology and is just around the corner from taking over the world. Unfortunately your technology will likely fail, because: [ ] it is impractical to manufacture at scale. [ ] it will be too expensive for users. [ ] it suffers from too few recharge cycles. [ ] it is incapable of delivering current at sufficient levels. [ ] it lacks thermal stability at low or high temperatures. [ ] it lacks the energy density to make it sufficiently portable. [ ] it has too short of a lifetime. [ ] its charge rate is too slow. [ ] its materials are too toxic. [ ] it is too likely to catch fire or explode. [ ] it is too minimal of a step forward for anybody to care. [ ] this was already done 20 years ago and didn't work then. [ ] by this time it ships li-ion advances will match it. [ ] your claims are lies
- dinfinity 1y agoCute, but you're supposed to actually mark the applicable ones. More importantly, there is no claim that it is better than li-ion. They're targeting low power devices used for very long times where replacement is impossible or undesirable.
- binary132 1y agoI think the idea is that the person making the claim is supposed to dutifully fill out the form
- benterix 1y agoYour comment applies to most of these articles. However, this one is a bit different. It is actually a niche product for specific devices, especially those that require decades of operation without recharging.
- giantg2 1y agoMy guess is these could have biomedical applications. Other than that, I doubt they would become widespread. The radioactive nature makes it unlikely to be used on the consumer market outside of maybe a few niches due to disposal concerns and the low power output limits it's possible applications.
- anonymousiam 1y agoThis looks like a big improvement over the current state-of-the-art. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betavoltaic_device https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betavoltaic_device