Researchers in Missouri have developed tiny nuclear batteries that may have the potential to power a host of devices in the future. The big advantage of nuclear batteries is the amount of charge they can store, more than a million times that of conventional chemical batteries.
Nuclear batteries are not new, they were used in the 1950s to power pacemakers and they are still used in some applications such as powering satellites where a long-lifetime is required. The problem with these batteries has been their large size. Nuclear batteries use a solid semiconductor material to collect the electrons emitted by the radioactive material. These particles have high-energies and the crystal structure of the semiconductor is damaged by the radioactivity. Therefore, to make the batteries last as long as the radioactive source, means that a large quantity of semiconductor material is required and this increases the size of the battery.
In the new nuclear batteries, a liquid semiconductor material is used and this is not damaged by the high-energy particles emitted by the radioactive source and so the battery can be made smaller.