Converting Radiation to Electricity
Snotnose writes:
A startup hopes to convert alpha particles into electricity.
Deep inside a compact laboratory, a chip no larger than a fingernail sits above a radioactive source and does something no commercial battery can.
It catches nuclear decay particles in flight and converts them straight into current.
No turbine. No heat exchanger. No moving parts.
The device is an alphavoltaic cell, and a portable fusion startup just secured a federal defense contract worth just over five million dollars to prove it can work at kilowatt scale.
So how, exactly, does a semiconductor chip turn the most hazardous decay particle into usable power?
Alpha particles are a different matter. Each one is a dense cluster of two protons and two neutrons, roughly 7,000 times heavier than an electron, carrying far more kinetic energy per particle than a beta emission does. That energy density advantage is the whole point of the Rads to Watts program, which aims to turn high-power nuclear radiation into kilowatts of usable electricity.
The barrier was never energy. It was stopping distance. An alpha particle travels only an inch or two in air before losing all momentum and becoming inert. That short range turns out to be exactly what an alphavoltaic cell needs: the particle deposits nearly all its energy inside a thin layer of solid material, where a semiconductor junction captures it as usable current.
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