X-ray radioluminescent battery with near milliwatt output power using CsI:Tl single crystal scintillator

Abstract

Low output power has long been the bottleneck of micro-radioisotope batteries as power supplies for the wireless sensor network, implantable medical equipment, and outer space exploration. Recently, x-ray radioluminescent batteries demonstrated the great potential to break the deadlock. In this work, we fabricated an x-ray radioluminescent battery with near milliwatt output power and demonstrated various potential applications. A 100% improvement on the conversion efficiency of 2.46% and the highest output power of 136.1  μW/cm2 were achieved when adopting a thallium doped cesium iodide (CsI:Tl) single-crystal scintillator in the battery. Subsequently, a 2 × 2 battery array was fabricated with a maximum output power of 466.9  μW and was used to power devices including micro-LEDs and a wireless sensor system with temperature monitoring. This demo system shows the feasibility of x-ray radioluminescent batteries as a long-lifetime micropower. The tremendous progress will draw broad attention on micro-nuclear batteries and inspire further exploration on the applications in the field of medical devices, space explorations, and Internet of Things.