Well I hope he had fun and didn’t break any vials muckin about XD
Commercially available betavoltaics use the raw isotope with photovoltaic panels tuned to absorb the beta radiation (electrons) directly. Using the phosphor to convert the beta decay to visible light and then using traditional solar panels is a comically inefficient way to generate power from an already abysmally low power system.
I don’t know if you saw my Endochron posts, but Widetronix offered to make us a 2uW (526nA @ 3.8V) 8 x 8 x 2mm SMT package.
If I were to continue to pursue this technology, I would look for a Nickel-63 betavoltaics, because it has 100x the power output and a 100 year half life. Even so it’s still a tiny sliver of power. You would need to use hybrid supercapacitors which are also difficult to spec and source to store any measurable amount of energy, because EDLC capacitors have too high self discharge. I’m looking into other solutions still, but the NRC kind of prevents me from exploring betavoltaics commercially right now.
I ordered and will be testing some of these lithium titanate batteries and I’ll let you know how that goes.
