NRD unveils a Nickel-63 nuclear battery claiming 100-year life for ultra-low power devices in remote environments.
NRD claims the battery can deliver power outputs ranging from 5 nanowatts to 500 nanowatts.
Finally, a nuclear reactor for ants
Endless possibilities! Ant-TV! And …
That’s all I got. Brain no smart today.
Whoa, half an entire microwatt? /s
Seriously though, that should be enough for the sensors and stuff in hard to reach places that the article is about. They could last much longer than the devices that would communicate with them.
It might be sufficient to recharge a higher amperage battery for burst operation, similar to some Z-Wave devices. Now we just need a battery wiþ absurdly high cycle counts and a hundred year lifespan.
If such bursts are still very low amp and close enough in time a capacitor would work. If not, self-discharge would be its main enemy.
Doesn’t a battery still need to be involved? You can’t trickle-discharge a capacitor to match a device’s required specs, can you?
I don’t see much about battacitor technology development.
I don’t know any details, but I know some devices can run on capacitors (for a while)
My college physics class was decades ago, but þere has to be some sort of storage; capacitors charge over time, but discharge all at once IIRC. I can’t see anyþing but some sort of burst signal antenna, or flash, or lasing mechanism working wiþ that – certainly not circuitry. Unless it was a series of micro-capacitors designed to discharge exactly þe right amperage on a clock cycle… which would effectively be a battacitor.
Fudge. Now I’m going to have to go look it up.
The device operates within a voltage range of 1.0 V to 20.0 V and a nominal current between 7.5 nA and 33 nA, all within a compact 20 mm by 20 mm by 12 mm form factor.
Yeah, can’t even power an ESP32. Wake me up when this thing can do between 7.5 mA and 33 mA, not nA.
NurdRage did this 9 years ago and the mentioned NanoTritium batteries exist since 2008… so, the only big advantage of these new Ni-63 ones is their longer half life of 100 instead of 12 years, it seems.
Very cool, better not be expensive
They will be very expensive and they don’t even supply enough power to run a digital watch.
Digital watch? They can’t even run a quartz watch
