The battery uses a radioactive isotope Strontium-90 to produce energetic particles that boost electrochemcial energy in a water based solution with a nanostructured titanium dioxide (TiO2) electrode with a platinum coating that collect and effectively directly convert the energy into electrons. The ionic solution is not easily frozen at very low temperatures. Beta particles produce electron-hole pairs in semiconductors via their loss of kinetic energy which contributes electrical energy.
The problem so far with solid beta decay battery design has been the serious radiation damage to the semiconductor lattice structures. The major benefit of utilizing a liquid-phase material is it's well known ability to efficiently absorb the kinetic energy of beta particles. The fluid absorbs the energy and passes much of it to the semiconductor. The radiation generated free radicals produced can be converted into electricity by using a plasmon-assisted, wide band gap oxide semiconducting material. Strontium 90 has a half life of 28.79 years and the maximum energy conversion efficiency of the battery is approximately estimated to be 53.88%.
There's also a publication in Nature called "Plasmon-assisted radiolytic energy conversion in aqueous solutions".
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 18 2014, @10:07PM
What is the equivalent ratio [wikipedia.org] for lithium batteries?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 18 2014, @10:14PM
The radiation hazard will make me look cool.
(Score: 4, Funny) by maxwell demon on Saturday October 18 2014, @10:47PM
No self-respecting SN reader will use a battery based on beta! ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 18 2014, @11:23PM
Don't you mean "Buck Feta Tadio Isorope!"
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Sunday October 19 2014, @05:20AM
I thought outing radicals in liquid was called waterboarding.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1) by fritsd on Sunday October 19 2014, @04:19PM
"Hideous nuclear waste that causes leukaemia and stays in your bones for life can also be used as a battery with a water-based electrolyte (what could possibly go wrong)"
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday October 19 2014, @09:22PM
The whole discussion is bad PR for NASA's RTGs as those are physically indestructible, rated for re-entry from orbit, and now we're going to have these ... things ... catching on fire on passenger aircraft just like lithium batteries, freaking everyone out.
The world would be better off if these liquid RTGs were never invented, which sounds super harsh, yet is also true. They're just going to be bad news.
I guess what I'm getting at is in theory "old fashioned" RTGs could be turned into dirty bombs but it requires enormous industrial like forces. These things, eh, just open the drain faucet and instant puddle of death.
Remember all you need to generate terror, if thats your game, is a clicking geiger counter. It need not be any more dangerous than owning a granite countertop. So even at exempt source limits these liquid RTGs are still going to be deployed as terror weapons.
I'm too lazy to figure out what to do with an exempt source class RTG even if it is 50% efficient.
So a tenth of a microcurie exempt Sr90 source would generate ... what, about F all? I'm sleepy but thats about 4000 decays/sec, right at 50% efficiency thats 2000 electrons/sec current so thats about 1e-15 amp aka about a femtoamp. So it would take about ten thousand exempt sources to power the sleep mode of a XLP series microcontroller. Or a couple orders of magnitude more to actually run the thing. Or rephrased if you can run one of the lowest power microcontrollers ever commercially mfgrd then dumping the liquid RTG out on the floor of (insert tourist trap here) will make a contamination puddle equal to 10K to 1M exempt sources. As a terror weapon, this RTG will be quite useful because being able to generate any serious power will also generate massive contamination.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 20 2014, @12:00PM
Wow, they are made out of unobtainium?
They may withstand extreme conditions, but I'm pretty sure they are not indestructible. Indeed, I'd bet that we already have the technology needed to destruct them. Which probably is not unlike the technology needed to make them.