Atomic Batteries: Energy from Radioactivity

Atomic Batteries: Energy from Radioactivity

With alternate, sustainable, natural sources of energy being sought after, there is new interest in energy from radioactivity, including natural and waste radioactive materials. A study of various atomic batteries is presented with perspectives of development and comparisons of performance parameters and cost. We discuss radioisotope thermal generators, indirect conversion batteries, direct con...

Predicting Induced Radioactivity at High Energy Accelerators

Atomic properties from energy-optimized wave functions

Most of the variational Monte Carlo applications on quantum chemistry problems rely on variance-optimized wave functions. Recently, M. Snajdr and S. M. Rothstein, @J. Chem. Phys. 112, 4935 ~2000!# have concluded that energy optimization allows one to obtain wave functions that provide better values for a wide variety of ground state properties. In this work we study the quality of energy-optimi...

Low Energy Atomic Photodesorption from Organic Coatings

Organic coatings have been widely used in atomic physics during the last 50 years because of their mechanical properties, allowing preservation of atomic spins after collisions. Nevertheless, this did not produce detailed insight into the characteristics of the coatings and their dynamical interaction with atomic vapors. This has changed since the 1990s, when their adsorption and desorption pro...

Batteries for efficient energy extraction from a water salinity difference.

The salinity difference between seawater and river water is a renewable source of enormous entropic energy, but extracting it efficiently as a form of useful energy remains a challenge. Here we demonstrate a device called "mixing entropy battery", which can extract and store it as useful electrochemical energy. The battery, containing a Na(2-x)Mn(5)O(10) nanorod electrode, was shown to extract ...