Samara scientists are working on creating a nuclear battery that can work for 100 years, the press service of the Samara University named after Korolev reports.
“Scientists of the Samara National Research University named after academician S. P. The Queen has developed a technology that allows you to create a battery with a service life of more than 100 years,”the message says.
According to the press service of the university, the technology is based on the idea of converting the energy emitted by a radioactive source into electrical energy. The radioactive isotope emits a stream of electrons and they generate electrical energy. Thanks to the emergence of an isotope electron, which generates a source of beta radiation, scientists create analogs of a photoconverter without using sunlight.
Scientists around the world are now working on the creation of power sources that could work using the energy of radioisotopes. Experimental models of nuclear batteries exist in Russia, Switzerland and the United States. The advantage of the developments of Samara scientists is that the product created on the basis of their technology will be environmentally friendly, cheap and have a long period of operation.
These advantages are provided by the use of carbon-14 in the new battery as a radioactive source. The half-life of this element is 5700 years. Carbon-14 is non-toxic and low cost.
The second difference between the development of scientists from Samara University is that a fundamentally new structure is used as a "substrate" for a radioactive element - a porous silicon carbide heterostructure. The indisputable advantage of the silicon carbide structure is also its resistance to radiation. When the isotope is emitted, it remains practically unchanged, which allows us to say that the battery made in Samara will work indefinitely (by the standards of human life) for a long time.
The field of application of "eternal" batteries, first of all, is "technologies of the future". Due to their compact size, these power supplies are ideal for various types of sensors in automated control and monitoring systems, including for uninterrupted monitoring of oil and gas pipelines throughout their entire life cycle in remote regions of Siberia, the Far East and the Arctic.
Wide opportunities for the use of new batteries are opening up in medicine, in particular, in cardiology. For cardiac patients, there is an acute problem of replacing the batteries in the pacemaker sensors that set the heart rate. Not all patients can withstand repeated surgery, and often their life is limited by the life of the pacemaker.
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“Researches of scientists from Samara University on the development of a new technology for creating power elements operating on radioactive isotopes began another fifteen years ago. A patent was received for the technology of invention of new semiconductor structures for obtaining electrical energy from radioisotopes. Receiving a prototype of a new battery is scheduled for October-November this year,”the message says.