Mobiles nuclear option

Despite undeniable advances over the years, one of the greatest bugbears remaining in mobile telephony is battery technology.

The simple fact is that mobiles just dont last very long between charges and with the data intensive applications on 3G phones I have used you can watch the power level dropping even as you download your video clips. Its not for nothing that journalists and handset vendor product managers routinely lug around a pocketful or two of spare batteries its the only way to get through the day.

However, a new type of power source could well be with us within five years, and it is being said that the new kit could keep a power-hungry 3G phone fully powered for at least six months at a time.

Research is well advanced on a new type of battery based on the radioactive decay of nuclear gas and the next generation of batteries may be based on nuclear technology!

In many ways the technology is not dissimilar to that employed to convert sunlight to electricity in a solar panel array. Called betavoltaics, the new system uses a silicon wafer to capture electrons emitted by a radioactive gas such as tritium, which is a radioactive form of hydrogen.

The technology has been known for some time but hitherto the yield from the simple nuclear decay of radioactive gas has been far too low to have any commercial application. Thats because as decay occurs, the electrons produced fire off in random directions and the majority of them are lost.

Now though, scientists in Canada have increased the efficiency of capturing and focusing the electrons to such an extent that a nuclear mobile battery could soon be a reality.

Traditionally, electrons have been captured on a surface of flat silicon and then converted into a minute electrical current. The Canadian scientists have devised a way to create a three-dimensional electron-collecting system by gouging silicon plates to produce tiny but comparatively deep pits, chasms and channels. Each pit is a mere micron wide (thats four ten-thousandths of an inch to those of you who dont use the decimal system) but can be up to 40 microns deep.

The research is particularly exciting because the manufacturing process behind it is standard in the semiconductor industry. Thus there wont have to be any other technological advances necessary to bring nuclear batteries to market and expectations are that the first prototypes will be built within the next two years and that the new batteries could become commercially available within five years.

Battery consumption is negligible as totally predictable and very simple nuclear decay of the radioactive gas provides a constant top-up. Scientists say the new batteries will be used in office and household sensors and other domestic devices as well as in phones. They will also be ideal for powering heart pacemakers and other surgically implanted devices.

Tritium emits very low energy particles that cannot penetrate skin and can easily be shielded by something as simple as a sheet of paper. Thats fortunate as it means the mobile phone users of 2010 wont have to wear lead suits to send an MMS message.

05.09.05
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