A Novel Radioisotope Microbattery Based on Betavoltaic Effect and Work Function

This paper reports a novel radioisotope microbattery structure that integrates a betavoltaic converter with a work function converter. The battery collects energy from radioisotope and environment vibration. A model is developed to simulate the mechanism of the proposed battery, and select parameters to improve its efficiency. Using the proposed model, the battery is designed with structures optimized for the environment vibration frequency in the range of 100–400Hz and 63 Ni of 11mCi. The theoretical output power is on the order of 200nW. The output power collected from the radioisotope is close to that from environment vibration. Since the vibration beam frequency of the work function converter is much larger than the environment frequency, the output power of the battery keeps stable when the environment frequency changes significantly.Copyright © 2010 by ASME