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Burning question... can a miniature version of this ever be ported to consumer electronics devices? :-/



There's a prototype betavoltaic battery which can sustain 50 microwatts on 20 Curies of tritium [1] -- an efficiency of about 2%. Scaling linearly by 10^4, current technology could get 500 milliwatts on 200 kCi, or 20 grams, enough to charge a 5 watt-hour phone battery in 10 hours. The tritium cost would be on the order of $600,000 today [2]. If you could do this, the battery charge time would be a few decades.

[1] http://www.citylabs.net/index.php?option=com_content&vie...

[2] http://fire.pppl.gov/fesac_dp_ts_willms.pdf


Yes, you would be burning with such a power source in a consumer electronic device.




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