Radiation-based battery keeps going for 28,000 years
These proofs were conducted at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (Livermore, Calif.) and by Professor Sir Michael Pepper at the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University.
NDB – standing for Nano Diamond Battery – was founded in 2018 with a view to harnessing the energy of high-speed electrons found in recycled intermediate-level and high-level radioactive waste. Such waste has a tremendously long half-life, up to thousands of years and so radiation-based batteries could provide an energy source in many extreme circumstances, such as space, as well as more commonplace ones.
The physical structure of the battery is a layered combination of a semiconductor, metal and ceramic which has two contact surfaces to facilitate charge collection. Several single units are attached together to create a stack arrangement, which is fabricated to create a positive and negative contact surface similar to a conventional voltaic battery. Every layer of the DNV stack consists of a high-energy electron output source and single-crystal diamond laid down using semiconductor CVD.
If developed successfully such batteries could be used in fields such as automotive, consumer electronics, sensors, space machinery, and other electronics powered by a chemical battery.
One of the proofs was the achievement for NDB’s battery structure of 40 percent charge, a significant improvement over commercial diamonds, which have 15 percent charge-collection efficiency. This is a result of NDB’s proprietary nano-diamond surface treatment that eases the emission of electrons from the diamond, allowing the battery to make use of significantly more power than any other battery before it.
NDB’s power source is from intermediate-level and high-level radioactive waste isotopes.The energy is absorbed in the diamond through inelastic scattering, which is used to generate electricity. Since the universal battery is self-charging, any excess charge can be stored in capacitors, supercapacitors and secondary cells.
To prevent over-heating and contain radiation with the device the DNV stack is coated with a layer of synthetic poly-crystalline diamond. The battery provides the charge for the entire lifetime of a device or machine, with up to 28,000 years of battery life, the company said.
Next: CEO said
“Our team is bringing together leaders in the nanotechnology, nuclear science and diamond fields with military, academic and research backgrounds, and combining our unique mix of expertise has made it possible for us to crack the code in developing this groundbreaking, life-changing solution,” said Nima Golsharifi, CEO and co-founder of NDB, in a statement. “With the NDB battery, we have achieved a massive, groundbreaking, proprietary technological breakthrough of a battery that is emission-free, lasts thousands of years and only requires access to natural air in order to power devices.”
Professor John Shawe-Taylor of University College London, said: “NDB has the potential to solve the major global issue of carbon emissions in one stroke without the expensive infrastructure projects, energy transportation costs, or negative environmental impacts associated with alternate solutions such as carbon capture at fossil fuel power stations, hydroelectric plants, turbines, or nuclear power stations. Their technology’s ability to deliver energy over very long periods of time without the need for recharging, refuelling, or servicing puts them in an ideal position to tackle the world’s energy requirements through a distributed solution with close to zero environmental impact and energy transportation costs.”
NDB said it is working with two customers; one a leader in nuclear fuel cycle products and services and the other an aerospace, defense and security manufacturing company. Development of the first prototype nano diamond battery is currently underway and is due to be completed in 2020.
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