{"id":646228,"date":"2024-12-07T20:00:32","date_gmt":"2024-12-07T17:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/radioactive-diamond-battery-could-power-spacecraft-for-thousands-of-years\/"},"modified":"2024-12-07T20:00:32","modified_gmt":"2024-12-07T17:00:32","slug":"radioactive-diamond-battery-could-power-spacecraft-for-thousands-of-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/radioactive-diamond-battery-could-power-spacecraft-for-thousands-of-years\/","title":{"rendered":"#Radioactive \u2018diamond battery\u2019 could power spacecraft for thousands of years"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Scientists in the UK have successfully created the world\u2019s first carbon-14 diamond battery, which could power low-energy devices like satellite communication equipment for over 5,000 years.<\/span><\/p>\n

The battery is made of the radioactive isotope carbon-14, encased in a thin layer of synthetic diamond. As the carbon-14 decays it emits electrons. The diamond acts like a semiconductor, converting these electrons into electricity. Since carbon-14 has a half-life of 5,700 years, scientists expect the battery to last for millennia.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) and the University of Bristol led the development, partly due to the former\u2019s work on fusion energy. However, the p<\/span>otential app<\/a>lications are wide-ranging.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Diamond batteries could power pacemakers, hearing aids, watches, computer chips \u2014 any low-power device in environments where frequent battery replacement isn\u2019t feasible.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Engineers could also use the batteries to power the communication equipment of spacecraft like Voyager 1, the farthest human-made object in space. NASA launched the satellite in 1977 and it is still sending data back to Earth. However, its power is expected to last only until 2036.\u00a0<\/span>The computer aboard Voyager 1 is also nuclear-powered, except its battery uses the isotope Plutonium-238, which has a half-life of only 87.7 years. If equipped with a carbon-14 diamond battery, the probe could have communicated its findings back home for thousands of years.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Voyager 1 is currently floating in space 15 billion miles away from Earth. Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech<\/figcaption>\"<\/figure>\n

\u201cDiamond batteries offer a safe, sustainable way to provide continuous microwatt levels of power,\u201d said the UKAEA\u2019s Sarah Clark.<\/span><\/p>\n

Shortwave radiation from the decaying carbon-14 doesn\u2019t pose a risk \u2014 it is fully absorbed by the diamond casing, the researchers said. The battery can also be recycled at the end of its life \u2014 if anyone is still around by then!\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The diamond part of the battery was grown at UKAEA\u2019s Culham Campus near Oxford, using a purpose-built plasma deposition rig. The carbon-14 was extracted from graphite blocks, a readily available byproduct of nuclear fission reactors.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While still early days, <\/span>Tom Scott, Materials Prof at the University of Bristol, said they were exploring industrial partnerships for potential commercialisation in the future.<\/span><\/p>\n

Scott led the team that began the first diamond battery experiments back in 2016. He even spun out a company, Arkenlight, off the back of this research.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe decade ahead is about improving power performance and upscaling production,\u201d said Scott. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Scientists in the UK have successfully created the world\u2019s first carbon-14 diamond battery, which could power low-energy devices like satellite communication equipment for over 5,000 years. The battery is made of the radioactive isotope carbon-14, encased in a thin layer of synthetic diamond. As the carbon-14 decays it emits electrons. The diamond acts like a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":646229,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/img-cdn.tnwcdn.com\/image\/tnw-blurple?filter_last=1&fit=1280%2C640&url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn0.tnwcdn.com%2Fwp-content%2Fblogs.dir%2F1%2Ffiles%2F2024%2F12%2Fweb_Carbon-14-diamond-battery-sample_credit_United-Kingdom-Atomic-Energy-Authority.jpg&signature=b07462789dea7e130ae6b8734b1bfebb","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-646228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=646228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/646229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}