Entangled Steam

Parker Dillmann
Welcome to circuit break from Macrofab, a weekly show about all things engineering, DIY projects, manufacturing, industry news, and nuclear batteries. We're your hosts, electrical engineers, Parker Dillmann.

Stephen Kraig
And Steven Kraig. This is episode 418.

Parker Dillmann
Stephen was giving me a thumbs up there saying I pronounced that correctly. Circuit Breaker from Macrofab.

Stephen Kraig
Hey, circuit breakers. We have an announcement. We are running an electronic design contest on our community forums, and the theme is food devices. Go to forum.macrofab.com to find out more information about the contest and how to enter. For prizes, there's over $5,000 in cash, free prototyping services through Macrofab, and the most important thing, trophies to show that your design was one of the best entered.

Stephen Kraig
There will be a link in the show notes on where to find more information about the contest and how to enter.

Parker Dillmann
And that is also sponsored by Macrofab and Mouser Electronics. So, yeah, we're going to talk about the Betavolt b v 100 atomic battery. Is it Betavolt they actually yeah, it is. That's the company name. Right.

Parker Dillmann
Is it Betavolt or Betavolt?

Stephen Kraig
I think I would go with Betavolt.

Parker Dillmann
So this is a atomic battery that is boasting a 50 year lifespan. And I think when we have, like, a discussion on our forms, form dot macfed.com, talking about this. I'm in the camp of I'm waiting until, like, I can actually buy the device and That has

Stephen Kraig
been your MO for a long time. Like, anytime there's some kind of big claim, Parker's always like, when can I have it? And Where's where's datasheet? Well, yeah. Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
Where's the yeah. Is it behind a paywall, this datasheet? Or do I have to, like, you know, sell my children in order to get the, the data sheet for it? So so I agree with you, Parker. When it comes to things of this sort where it's, like, pretty extreme claims, like these really big claims like a battery that has a a lifespan of 50 years, it's kind of just like, okay, show me the actual data and then tell me when I can buy 1 and when I can actually check this out.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. So the the b v 100 is a nickel 63 isotope battery that basically I think that's a it emits electrons. Right?

Stephen Kraig
Yes. I believe it's beta particles and a beta particle is a charged well, it's just an electron or a Yeah. Positron.

Parker Dillmann
The nickel 63 basically emits a high energy electron, and then then the substrate captures that and uses it as the energy that your device can use. Now, the b v 100 only uses a or only delivers a 100 microwatts at 3 volts, which isn't a lot, but that is a lot over 50 years.

Stephen Kraig
Sure. Yeah. Yeah. If you take time into the equation, it is a lot. But if we're talking about short periods of time, it's very little power.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. That that's actually one thing is it doesn't actually, say that's a 100 micro watt hours or anything like that. It just says a 100 micro watts. So it could be like a burst.

Stephen Kraig
Well, it could be. Yeah. You're right. But I would think that this nickel 63 isotope is probably a very continuous emitter. So so they're probably specking that.

Stephen Kraig
I you know, I'm I'm I'm speculating right now, but they're probably just saying that is a continuous. It is capable of a continuous a 100 microwatts at 3 volts.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. And, apparently, there's plans for a 1 watt version in that's a year from now, so 2025, which is a lot more interesting of a device. Yeah. I wonder if it's just gonna be 10 times bigger.

Stephen Kraig
Well, okay. So the size of this thing is 15 millimeters by 15 millimeters by 5 millimeters, which, you know, okay.

Parker Dillmann
In in My bad. It's gonna be a 100 times bigger. Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Which so it's not necessarily small, but for a battery that boasts 50 years, it's incredibly small. Right? And, the thing that's cool is the construction of this is sort of like, I'm I'm doing a little bit of interpretation here, but it's sort of like a radioactive solar panel stack where they have stacks of diamond semiconductor materials that are doped such that free beta particles actually act in the same general way that solar panels do. And they just kind of package it into this little square battery like device.

Stephen Kraig
So the concept behind it is really cool. It's all about power density and it's life, and it sounds like they have life taken care of. It's the instantaneous or short term power density that is, I don't know. A 100 microwatts at 3 volts is difficult to sell in terms of its use. Right?

Stephen Kraig
Because what is a 100 microwatts good for in general?

Parker Dillmann
A cat feeder and reminder.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Actually, I was thinking okay. So obviously, this is low power stuff, so, like, I don't know, like a watch or something like that. Right? So what was the cat feeder on reminder?

Stephen Kraig
Because I thought of that when I was looking at the notes earlier today. Do you remember?

Parker Dillmann
Oh, it was polling only nanoamps.

Stephen Kraig
Really? Yeah. Well, wait. Nanoamps when you put it to sleep. Right?

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. But it was only pulling, like, microamps when it was awake.

Stephen Kraig
Okay.

Parker Dillmann
So it was not a lot. It was at the point where I mean, I can't remember anymore, but it was the the because well, basically, I put that project on hold because the whole reason I was designing it went away. I do wanna finish it up.

Stephen Kraig
I like I like that that your your project outlived its own usefulness, and that's not necessarily your fault just because its usefulness changed not very long after you started the project.

Parker Dillmann
That's true. Yeah. The, I do wanna finish it, but the main hurdle I'm running into is the because I was using super caps to store the power. Mhmm. And the well, Ultra Caps is whatever the branding that it was that I was using.

Parker Dillmann
Anyways, the the leakage current was more than my device was pulling. That's a joke. That was that was the bad part.

Stephen Kraig
Is an ultracapacitor is that a marketing term, or is that an actual thing?

Parker Dillmann
It's an actual thing that's basically, like, a more improved supercapacitor. They have better leakage. They etcetera. Like, all the specs are better.

Stephen Kraig
Okay. So Ultra, it's better than super. I what what comes after? A turbo capacitor? Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
Turbo capacitor.

Parker Dillmann
Ultimates. Well, it'd be like a like a horror movie. You know how it always ends up, like, by the 4th movie, it's like Leprechaun in space.

Stephen Kraig
Terrible movie. Leprechaun.

Parker Dillmann
I actually watched Leprechaun 2, like, couple weeks ago. That movie is horrendous.

Stephen Kraig
That's rich coming from you because you watch all kinds of bad movies. Yeah. He has a leprechaun go kart. Like it like branded?

Parker Dillmann
Yes. It, like, it has, like, leprechaun features on it.

Stephen Kraig
Wait. And and this is happening in only the second movie? Yes. Oh, man. God.

Stephen Kraig
Movies bad. Those are terrible movies.

Parker Dillmann
That's probably in the top five worst movies ever watched. Wow.

Stephen Kraig
Okay. Yeah. And and this is coming from Parker who, who we had a conversation actually, I think it was just last night about all 7 Tremors movies. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
None of those are my top or bottom 5. None of them are my bottom. Wow.

Stephen Kraig
Okay.

Parker Dillmann
No. Even even the third one, which is probably no. It's the 5th one. The 5th one is probably the worst one. I think that's the one with its tremors in Antarctica, but they didn't have the budget to do that.

Parker Dillmann
So they filmed it in the desert, and they put a blue filter over it.

Stephen Kraig
Just to make it look snowy or icy.

Parker Dillmann
That movie is not good. But it's definitely better than Lepicoff 2. The prom okay. The prom with in bad movies, what makes them really bad that I don't like them is when they start violating their own, like, universe rules. That's when it starts getting bad.

Stephen Kraig
So so that's why

Parker Dillmann
you want consistency.

Stephen Kraig
That's what that's what you value.

Parker Dillmann
It just has to follow its own rules. It can make up whatever those rules are because it's its own thing. Yeah. It's a universe.

Stephen Kraig
Establish the rules and then stick to them.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Which is why the sequels of Star Wars are the worst movies of Star Wars because it just all of them break their own rules of the universe. So it's like, well, now it's useless.

Stephen Kraig
I agree. I agree. There there's some pretty egregious things that they set up and then just ignore in the in the sequels.

Parker Dillmann
Ignore or Or just violent. Like, yes. Like, on perp like, characters even call it out in, like, this is episode 9. Call out this stuff in, like, episode 9, and they'll go, whatever.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Well, I get that they were trying to erase some things that were problematic, but they just end up making more problems. I don't know. There was there was a lot of shooting themselves in the foot when it came to those movies.

Parker Dillmann
Yes. Those yeah. But back to,

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. The Star Wars universe has 50 years batteries. Right?

Parker Dillmann
So so okay. That concept trying to figure out, like, I'm trying to work in my brain how we got here.

Stephen Kraig
I I really like okay. So we're calling them nuclear batteries here, but traditionally, I've heard them called atomic batteries. And I love atomic because it immediately makes me think like 19 fifties, like you just snap to that. Right? And atomic batteries have been around for quite a while.

Stephen Kraig
In fact, there's a I I was looking through the Wikipedia page earlier today. There's at least 5 or 6 different technologies based around nuclear decay and capturing it as an energy source. And there's a bunch of different ways of doing it. A lot of it just has to do with heat. They heat something up and cause a voltage differential across things.

Stephen Kraig
In fact, I think some of the first atomic batteries were basically thermocouples, right, that they just got hot and a difference, and then, you know, the thermoelectric effect, you generate a slight voltage on it. And if you do that enough, with enough thermocouples, you can actually get some kind of useful power out of it.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. So these with the nickel 63, they're called beta volteric batteries, where they're capturing the the high energy electron and basically converting it directly to energy.

Stephen Kraig
Right. They're skipping the whole heat aspect of or not I shouldn't say skipping. They're they're not utilizing that as the driving factor.

Parker Dillmann
There's another type of battery that's very similar to this, but it actually goes back to your analogy where these are kinda like a solar cell, a photovaric cell. Because there there's actually a type of atomic or radiation battery that uses photoelect photoferrit cells.

Stephen Kraig
Tritium. Yeah. Like, I I was thinking, like, the gun sights, you know, the glowing gun Tritium gun sights. Yeah. Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
Anyways, you can there's batteries out there that literally use Tritium, and then they put a solar they put a solar panel facing it inside of a box, and you get power out of it.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Actually, I never really thought about that. But yeah. If it emits light, and then you put a solar panel that is at least sensitive somewhat in that spectrum, that works. It's probably not very efficient, but.

Parker Dillmann
No. But it's a very simple version of of a atomic battery. Because you could technically do the same kind of style where you could sandwich, you know, solar panels with a thin layer of tritium and then, you know, stack it up that way. It's probably not as efficient as as these, better Valtteric style batteries, but it's that's a solution. I know the the idea of having, like because people have Tritium on, like, key chains and stuff.

Parker Dillmann
Like, that whole concept doesn't sound like a great idea to me, but especially where you have usually keys in your pocket.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
But it might not be high energy enough or it won't matter. It's the same thing with here because the the whole thing with, nickel 63 isotopes is you would have to pretty much, like, break the chip and then consume it for it to be even remotely dangerous to you.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, yeah. For sure.

Parker Dillmann
So because the the the basically, the energy particles don't travel that far. They fall off really quickly.

Stephen Kraig
Correct. And there's a high likelihood that this is going to be inside of some kind of a case. And and, you know, you'd be surprised at, looking at radiation shielding and how little it actually takes to block a lot of particles. You know, gamma rays are are problematic. They go kinda go right through everything, but but some of the other particles are they don't take very much to block.

Stephen Kraig
And if you already have a pretty low emitter and it's inside of a case and it's inside of its own little battery shell, it's probably fairly safe. And, you know, unless like you said, unless it's something that you, like, swallow and it's emitting inside you, your skin is actually not that bad of a, barrier or a shield.

Parker Dillmann
I would say the probably the biggest problem with this is actually recycling it.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. That's a good point. They're going into a landfill. What are the rules on disposing of radioactive materials.

Parker Dillmann
Like Throw it in the ocean.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Get through. Sure.

Parker Dillmann
That's a lead acid battery meme. Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
Just throw it.

Parker Dillmann
Have you ever heard of that?

Stephen Kraig
No. Just throw it in the ocean.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. You you you don't do this. This is a joke, everyone. The the meme is you gotta charge up those electric eels. So instead of taking your battery back to auto zone, you just throw it in the ocean.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Yeah. This sounds totally reasonable.

Parker Dillmann
You gotta recharge those eels.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Perfect. You

Parker Dillmann
gotta recharge those eels.

Stephen Kraig
Well, okay. So smoke detectors have a little pellet of, I think it's the Aramecium in it, and that's actually the one of the main functions of a smoke detector is it has an emitter and a detector, and it's expecting a certain amount of radiation to cross a gap, and if particles, I e smoke or anything gets in the way and reduces that, the smoke detector's like, hey, there's a problem. Right? So every smoke detector has some small amount of radioactive material. Is it okay to just dispose of a smoke detector?

Stephen Kraig
I've never had to so I don't know what the rules are behind this. And I'm sure not all smoke detectors work exactly that way, but, you know, in general is what I'm getting at. There are things in our homes that have radioactive elements.

Parker Dillmann
In the United States, it is legal to dispose of smoke detectors in a landfill because they are not considered hazardous waste.

Stephen Kraig
I guess the the the the pellet that they put in there is probably so, so not radioactive. Like, it's just barely enough.

Parker Dillmann
Well, apparently, like well, Kiddie, which is like a big brand that makes, like, smoke detectors and and fire extinguishers. They say don't throw it away.

Stephen Kraig
Okay. What but how do you dispose of that?

Parker Dillmann
Throw it in the ocean.

Stephen Kraig
You know, and and it's funny. It's not there there it's not illegal. Well, I don't know how to say this. Because it is illegal, but also not. It's not illegal to own radioactive material.

Stephen Kraig
Like, you can go on Ebay and buy uranium ore. Like, you can. It's or you could there's some in the mountains just to my left over here, like, not that far away from my house. You can literally go find uranium in the mountains and, like, it's not a problem. I mean, if if you're going out and buying lots and lots of radioactive material, that's when it's starts getting illegal.

Stephen Kraig
But in terms of disposing of it, that's just not something that the average Joe has to think about. Let's put it that way.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. I remember trying to I had a whole bunch of old paint, like, a ton of old paint. And trying to get rid of that was a headache. Eventually, I found, like, a recycler that would just take, like, the empty cans. But when I called up the Houston waste department or whatever it was called

Stephen Kraig
Throw it in the ocean?

Parker Dillmann
Because you can't throw away liquid paint.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, okay.

Parker Dillmann
K?

Stephen Kraig
Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
And so what they wanted me to do this this this is what the person on the phone told me to do, was to take the paint and paint something and then wait for it to dry and then throw that thing away. Really?

Stephen Kraig
Yes. Okay.

Parker Dillmann
Basically, turn basically, VOC for the Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
I let all the stuff burn off. Out. Yeah. Out gas.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. And then you throw away the the pigment, basically, the solids part.

Stephen Kraig
And I

Parker Dillmann
was just like, that sounds like a pain in the butt. No. I'll put it this way. No wonder people just throw shit into the ocean.

Stephen Kraig
We shouldn't laugh, but

Parker Dillmann
But that's why. Because it's a some stuff is such a pain in the butt to get rid of. So that's why, like, you just find tire because it costs money to, like, recycle tires. Right? Mhmm.

Parker Dillmann
You can't just Right. Give tires away to the landfill. You have to pay. So people just literally throw them in the fields. Right.

Parker Dillmann
Or they put them in the ocean so they could recharge the tire eels.

Stephen Kraig
Or they light them on fire.

Parker Dillmann
Oh, god. Burning rubber is like the worst smell ever.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, it's awful.

Parker Dillmann
I don't know. I like thinking about that for a moment. Like, I like cars doing burnouts and I like doing burnouts in cars. This some people love that smell and I'm like, man, that's like the worst aspect of burnouts for me in a car.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. And it's really intrusive. Once a car burns out, you smell that for a long time, and it's powerful.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Burning rubber is, like, I love the aspect of doing burnouts and all that stuff, but, man, the smell is the one thing I just can't stand for it. Yeah. It's probably good for my wallet that I don't like. I that for that reason.

Stephen Kraig
Tires are not cheap.

Parker Dillmann
No. They're not. I like so I'll put this I like going through events where there's burnouts happening, and I can just watch it. Just

Stephen Kraig
watch from afar with a beer in your hand. You're good.

Parker Dillmann
And I just make sure I'm upwind.

Stephen Kraig
K. So a 100 micro watts at 50 years. Like you were saying, like, if you take the the cumulative amount of energy across 50 years, that's actually quite a bit of power. Right? It's it's not insignificant.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. I wonder if if it's a 100 let's just say it's a 100 micro watt hours is what we're getting. What's that end up being? Like, how much actually total power is that?

Stephen Kraig
Wait. A 100 microwatt hours? So a 100 microwatts for 1 hour?

Parker Dillmann
Well, like, what is the actual, like, capacity of this battery?

Stephen Kraig
Oh, yeah. I mean, you'd probably have to just calculate a 100 microwatts of 3 volts for 50 years. Right? Basically, half a 1000000 days

Parker Dillmann
or half a 1000000 hours. It's 438000 hours. It'd be interesting to calculate how much, like, actual electrons are being the like, let's say it captures all the electrons that the nickel 63 is emitting, right, for 50 years. Does that actually work in this 100 microwatts calculation? 1st, like, because they say the size is 15 by 15 by 5 millimeters.

Parker Dillmann
Like, how much of this nickel is in there? Could you actually fit all this nickel in there, etcetera? Kinda like smell test it.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, yeah. They're, like, basically back calculating are they lying to us by giving you numbers that are just ridiculous. Yeah. I do wonder well, okay. So, like, the 50 year comment, obviously, the this battery hasn't been around for 50 years, so it's theoretical based off of the half life decay of of everything.

Parker Dillmann
It Yeah. It could be it lasts 50 years, but you can't get a 100 microwatts at 3 volts for 50 years out of it.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. You can't just put a continuous load on it the entire time. But you maybe you could. As the radioactive material decays, that has to reduce. Right?

Stephen Kraig
That has to drop. So is it a 100 megawatts for 1 year, and then it precipitously drops after that? I I assume there has to be some kind of decay curve.

Parker Dillmann
Or you have, like, double the amount in there that you need. Something like that. Yeah. So your output's always a 100 microwatts.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. I don't know how you would how you would construct it where you could guarantee a particular load for a long time. That seems difficult or unlikely. Let's put it that way.

Parker Dillmann
You just have extra. I mean, if if it if it functions a lot like a solar cell, you don't have to pull all the power of all the photons pulling off your panel.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, no. Yeah. No. A a 100%.

Parker Dillmann
The same. Or the same way.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Yeah. A 100%. The thing though is if you're not using this battery, the fuel is constantly being used because it's just decaying. Correct.

Stephen Kraig
Right?

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. It's just decaying.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. So one of the initial things that comes to mind when talking about a battery like this is using it in a smartphone. Right? That's that would be one of the cool aspects of a battery of this sort where it's you go to the store, you buy a phone, and that phone has charge for its entire life. Right?

Stephen Kraig
Like it just that's it. And there's no way that you're going to hold on to that phone for 50 years. So it just has you just buy it, and it's always on.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. If it has, like, 3 or 4 years of power. Yeah. At a minimum.

Stephen Kraig
Right? So Parker and I kind of did a little bit of discussion before this of questioning if this battery has any kind of legs in terms of that kind of a, system. And really what we were more calculating is how much is, like, a quiescent across an entire, say, day? What is a quiescent draw that a smartphone would, would pull from a battery. And, you know, assuming a typical, like, 300 milliamp hour battery in a smartphone being 3.7 volts, we came up with 3,000, you mean?

Stephen Kraig
3000. Sorry. Yeah. So 3 amp hours, basically. We came up with a figure that the continuous draw given a 24 hour period is about a 125 milliamps continuous.

Stephen Kraig
So if we're talking about a 100 microwatts at 3 volts, we're a handful of orders of magnitude away from actually being able to pull this off here.

Parker Dillmann
Because that's half a watt basically, continuous on average. It spikes a lot more than that for sure. Especially when you turn it on your screen. Beta volt says they want to come out with a 1 watt version in a year. If you put in, like, let's say, the 1 watt version and then you had a way to, like, charge up a reserve.

Parker Dillmann
Right? So that you when someone activates the screen, it doesn't immediately saturate the battery. Right. So you charge up, like, let's say, a small lithium cell that can deliver, like, a burst of 15 minutes of screen time. You know what?

Parker Dillmann
That, I would actually probably buy that. I don't really do anything on my phone. I might look up some Amazon stuff or, like, I will ask a question on Google or whatever. Mhmm. But I don't like chat all the time on my phone or play game.

Parker Dillmann
I, like, I don't have actually any games on my phone Yeah. At all. I know everyone's different in that regard. Some people will use their phone more, like, I think I actually I get, like, 2 and a half days of battery on my phone, and it's a it's a pixel 7. Mhmm.

Parker Dillmann
So I use way less than our calculated figure here. So, like, if if it was like, hey, you know, you have 3 years of radiation energy in your phone, but you can only use, like, the screen for 15 minutes at a time every hour. I'd be like, oh, yeah. That's that's totally fine. That would work for me.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. If you never have to charge your phone, you buy it once, you're done. That's it.

Parker Dillmann
And you could use some stuff like, oh, what if you use, like you have, like, the high pixel density screen for, like, taking pictures. Mhmm. But then you had, like, a e ink display for, like, texting and stuff. Oh, yeah. So that's super low power that you you could but doesn't need to be refreshed a lot and doesn't need to have colors and stuff.

Stephen Kraig
I would actually consider that just as more of a reason to not be on my phone. She's like, nope. I got 15 minutes. That's it. If I go anymore, this thing blows up or whatever.

Parker Dillmann
Well, it would just shut off. The screen would just turn off.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. I'm curious, I'm curious to our listeners if if that was the criteria. You get it for 15 minutes, but you never have to charge it. You just buy the phone, you're done. Would you would you buy that phone if it was available today?

Stephen Kraig
If it

Parker Dillmann
had the dual screen that I just talked about or, like, there was, like, a so if you were, like, texting someone or talking or because the e ink display won't actually use a lot of power. No. I would I would totally buy it. That'd be, you know now the only thing is, like, I think the cameras part of a phone takes a lot of power. That's one thing I've noticed.

Parker Dillmann
Like, if I've taken photos, like, my camera is like, my phone gets hot, basically. Because I'm it's pulling a lot of power to run that camera system. And also, like, video conferencing. Like, if you're in, like, a Google Hangout or something, man, phone starts cooking.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
So I don't think you could do that kind of stuff on it. Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
And and if you're the kind of person that, like, you know, you get in bed and before you go to sleep, you watch a handful of YouTube videos or something like that, this probably would not work for that. No. It would

Parker Dillmann
not work either. Maybe maybe, just maybe, phones can become just phones again.

Stephen Kraig
They go full full circle.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. But, like, a nuclear powered phone would be I would buy that if it was just a phone. It had texting maybe. And I guess, should we even throw in data, like like a browser?

Stephen Kraig
No. I don't think so. I don't think so. It it goes it goes all the way back. In fact okay.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Just just voice and text. That's it. I feel like if it was voice and text for 15 minutes, you could absolutely use one of these batteries to charge up a bank, give you enough time. Oh, if it was like

Parker Dillmann
if you were just doing text and voice, you wouldn't need a full color screen. You could probably just run it off like a, you know, like one of those old school TFT displays that was in a Nokia phone.

Stephen Kraig
Right.

Parker Dillmann
Because those don't pull a lot of power. Right. Yeah. You wouldn't have to have that 15 minute limit then at that point. It would just work.

Stephen Kraig
It would just yeah. It would just be a phone that's always available.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Always on. No charging required.

Stephen Kraig
That that and then it is funny though. Right? Because we still call smartphones phones, but nobody actually uses them to call. I shouldn't say nobody. But but, I mean, that's a joke obviously.

Stephen Kraig
But in fact, it's it's funny. When I started this my newest job, which, it's been about a year now, I'm I'm not young. I'm I'm 30 I'll be 37 soon, but I'm and I but I'm one of the oldest engineers there aside from my my boss. And he's made so many jokes about you kids just won't pick up the phone and call somebody. Like, you'll send an email, you'll send a a chat to vendors or whatnot.

Stephen Kraig
He's like, just pick up the phone and call them. They're not gonna hurt you kinda thing. I'm like, come on, man. I'll call them. I'm I'm not that young that I won't do that.

Stephen Kraig
But, yeah. No. I I think it's funny that we have these things that we still call phones where the actual phone aspect of it is, like, the least used part of it. Yeah. I mean, I

Parker Dillmann
I call them computer phones. So

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. No. That's that's totally what they are.

Parker Dillmann
But, yeah, I would say even calling them a computer phone is probably, like, I use the phone part.

Stephen Kraig
That's generous to the phone part. Yeah. Because it's 50% of the name.

Parker Dillmann
Right. Where it's like 1% of the functionality. So, yeah, I'm gonna wait till we actually get one of these out in the wild before, you know, doing in too much more, thinking about these kind of devices. But it does sound like there's, like, sounds like they wanna sell them.

Stephen Kraig
So You know, one one application that I could see, there's a particular type of satellite thruster that uses basically a spark gap to send a little bit of jolt and move a satellite. It's good on really small satellites, like things a little bit bigger than a a cubesat, where basically you can use a solar panel to go to a switch mode power supply, you step up to a really high voltage, and you can cause a spark on a spark gap, and that's just enough thrust to, like, turn a satellite slightly. I could see this being really useful for those kinds of applications when the sun's not shining or you're on the other side of the Earth or whatever and you still need to charge up your battery bank. So, you know, you don't have to use thrusters when the sun is shining kind of situation. Something like this could could work for that.

Stephen Kraig
I I see the limitations of the low power can be overcome if you think about time. If you just think of, like, I have lots of time available to store up what this thing is doing. Great. But in terms of just, like, consumer electronics, time is, like, the least thing you have. People want it immediately.

Stephen Kraig
They want it to do something. They wanna step on the accelerator and go from 0 to a 100 miles an hour in 2 seconds. So it's it's not ready for that kind of game day. But the one watt won. Let's keep our eye on this for, I guess, another year.

Stephen Kraig
But assuming the one watt comes out, that's when it starts to get really like, you raise an eyebrow and say, there's there's real application to this now.

Parker Dillmann
I wonder how

Stephen Kraig
expensive it's gonna be. It

Parker Dillmann
because a lot of the super low power stuff is also well, like, we're talking about, like, 100 microwatts. Like, let's say, TV remote.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
Right? But the thing is, a TV remote can run off of 1 triple a battery that costs, like, 10¢. For years. For years.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. And then some

Parker Dillmann
and then and then when it starts acting up, you take the battery out and you, like, roll it around your hands and you put it back in and it still works for, like, another month.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. That's true. You shake it. I don't know

Parker Dillmann
what that does, but it it it works.

Stephen Kraig
You you redistribute the juices. Yeah. You know, the the other thing is you'd have to get past the perception of radioactivity. Like, people knowing that there's a radioactive thing in it. And, like, say if it wasn't a phone and you're putting it right up next to your head, would people just say, like, no.

Stephen Kraig
I'm not I'm not getting near that.

Parker Dillmann
Well, people don't complain about the radioactive stuff that's in, like, a smoke detector.

Stephen Kraig
I also think people don't know about this stuff that's in a smoke detector.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. So you just don't say anything about it.

Stephen Kraig
You just you just say it's a really awesome battery, and they say, how does it work? Because they don't worry about it.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. They don't worry about it. Well, it's like the whole idea with, quantum entangled elements or quantum entangled particles where, like, if you wiggle 1, the other one wiggles no matter how far apart it is. That's the craziest. Like, that's that's where I think is, like, the future of power is that.

Stephen Kraig
So wait. Are you saying we're gonna have massive storage banks and then we just quantum entangle batteries to those so you could take them anywhere else and then you have power on demand at a distance?

Parker Dillmann
That's no. That's exactly exactly what it is. So, like, you would have a a, you know, your your substation or whatever that has all these entangled particles that are entangled with other particles somewhere else. Like, let's say in a chip. Right?

Parker Dillmann
And then the substation just, like, jiggles your electron. Right? And the electron that's in your smartphone or whatever, it is jiggling now, and you can pull power off of it.

Stephen Kraig
Well, yes. I see where you're you're going there. However, the I think the quantum entanglement just relates to the electron spin. So it's just a characteristic, but it's not a but once you have flipped 1, I don't think you can re flip it back. In other words Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
I think that's the problem. I think well, the the problem is what is it? The whole causality thing where you can't you can't send information with that. In other words, say if you take one entangled particle and you go to Mars and you want to send back a message saying I'm at Mars, there's I don't remember all the details about it, but there's something about the fact that that breaks causality or it breaks Mhmm. The sending of information.

Stephen Kraig
Betting on me. And so you can't, there's no way to actually be sure that it wasn't you who observed the particle versus them causing the state to change. The the real thing is I don't know is there a change in energy? Like, are you transmitting energy in some way by observing the state, or are you just causing it to, I guess, the wave functions to collapse and that's it? Is there any is there any energy involved in that?

Stephen Kraig
Because maybe there is some credence to what you're talking about where it's like, I'm wiggling electron over here. I'm putting energy into this one, and it instantly transmits the same amount of energy to the entangled particle. Unfortunately, I don't think that's how it works because people would probably be, like, people would be jumping on that real fast. Right? Well, I

Parker Dillmann
think they are. You you

Stephen Kraig
know what I said earlier about the whole don't worry about it comment just a moment ago? I feel like almost all of quantum mechanics is like, hey, how does this work? Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. It just does.

Stephen Kraig
If we can't actually explain it, just don't worry about it.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Here's a paper from 2018 about quantum entangled power transmission.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, okay. So maybe that is the case where if if you if you force 1 entangled particle in one spin, you force it to go both directions and the other one responds, perhaps there is energy transfer in there.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. That's I haven't read this paper yet. This I literally just googled quantum entangled energy transfer.

Stephen Kraig
Come on, Parker. You can't digest a quantum mechanics paper in a few seconds and deliver me the answer?

Parker Dillmann
And here's here's an article about and actually from last year. Physicists use quantum mechanics to pull energy out of dot dot dot. Their buts? Energy out of nothing, which is probably not nothing, but it's quantum entangled elements or particles. I remember reading about this a couple of years ago and, being like, if that if we can actually make that work, that's what the that's gonna be the new thing.

Parker Dillmann
Is is that's the future. Is that concept of quantum untangling a bunch of particles and then you, like, rent or buy capacity, you know, a 100 microwatts basically of of power at this chip, and there's probably still gonna be steam involved because all power generation involves

Stephen Kraig
steam. And tangled steam. I'm pretty sure there's some fundamental laws that this is breaking because if if you can instantaneously transmit energy, energy is still can be information. Right? So so that would allow for the instantaneous transmission of information.

Parker Dillmann
Well, I think it has to propagate still. It still has to propagate.

Stephen Kraig
No. That's the whole thing about entangled particles is they they're instantaneous. There's no propagation time in between them. That's what makes them so weird. In fact I'm pretty sure there's some I'm trying to remember the name of the experiment where they entangled particles and brought them up apart like, 2 different islands and and we're doing some kind of a test of the propagation delay in between them, and the result was that it was supposedly instantaneous.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. This is well beyond our our knowledge base.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, we're yeah. We're we're we're totally in in the who knows territory here.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Let us know in the comments how bad we are messing this up.

Stephen Kraig
Actually, better yet, if you are a quantum physicist, reach out and come on and tell us how we're wrong, and we would love to have you on as a guest because this is a very fascinating topic that I bet I would love, Parker would probably love, and I bet you our listeners would too. So reach out if you are or you know a quantum physicist that can come on and tell us all the ways that we're wrong.

Parker Dillmann
Form.macrofab.com. Yeah. Podcast@macrofab.com is the email address. Yeah. I think if that is possible, I think that's actually the next that's the next big leap for technology, I think.

Stephen Kraig
I mean, radioactive batteries are worthless at that point. Who cares. Right?

Parker Dillmann
That's true. But that's why I think, like because radioactive batteries actually have been around since, like, the forties fifties. So not really anything actually new. Miniaturizing it and making it safer is totally new, for sure.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Also, I think the the mechanism through which this particular one works is somewhat new, but the overall concept of taking a radioactive element and getting electrical energy out of that, that's not new.

Parker Dillmann
I think that's would be, like, the next biggest leap for me at least is because that actually makes quantum stuff, like, usable by for people instead of just being a theory kind of stuff. That'd be so cool.

Stephen Kraig
It would be. Yeah. You just go down to the local entangled, you know, facility, you know, and pour out a little some entangled electrons and take them back and do something with them. Right? Get a get a get a bucket and just fill it up.

Parker Dillmann
Well, it's gotta be, like, you can't look into the container though because then you'll be observing them.

Stephen Kraig
Because they're they're all useless. Don't look at it. Yeah. Don't look at them. Don't observe it.

Parker Dillmann
So, yeah, Listeners, let us know how terrible we messed up quantum mechanics, but also like if this component becomes a thing, a real thing, we could actually buy it. How would you use it? How would you utilize a 100 microwatts at 3 volts?

Stephen Kraig
Also, has anyone seen one of these or even played with 1? I would love to hear your your thoughts on that.

Parker Dillmann
Well, beta volteric devices do exist.

Stephen Kraig
I don't know if you

Parker Dillmann
can go to Mauser or anything like that and buy 1.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, no.

Parker Dillmann
Actually, can you? Can you buy anything atomic powered on Mauser?

Stephen Kraig
Oh, yeah. I I, I bet you they have stuff. Atomic.

Parker Dillmann
Well, you can buy atomic clocks.

Stephen Kraig
I was about to say clocks. Right? Or or rubidium crystal? What I am now I'm talking them out of my butt.

Parker Dillmann
But can you buy, like, power sources? Also, there's actually some companies working on those tritium batteries as well. Can I buy 1? Doesn't look like it. So when one of the when beta volts actually comes out with the b v 100 and we can go and buy 1, we should just I don't wanna say we should buy 1 because I we have no idea how much these are gonna cost yet.

Stephen Kraig
The yeah. They they could be extremely expensive. We have no idea.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Maybe someone out there will sponsor us to buy 1 and build something with it.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, that'd be cool.

Parker Dillmann
Maybe Beta Vault will.

Stephen Kraig
The cat the cat feed reminder?

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Yeah. The nuclear powered cat feeder on reminder.

Stephen Kraig
So thank you for listening to circuit break from MacroFab. We were your hosts, Steven Craig. And Parker Dohman. So long for now. Later, everyone.

Stephen Kraig
And take it easy. Oh, and take it easy.

Parker Dillmann
Thank you, Yes You, our listener, for downloading our podcast. Tell your friends and coworkers about Circuit Break Podcast. Or Or it should be the Circuit Break Podcast. Oh, who who cares at this point? If you're still listening Thank you.

Parker Dillmann
If you have a cool idea, project, or topic you want to discuss, let Steven and I and the community know. Our community where you can find personal projects, discussions about the podcast, engineering topics, and news is located atform.macfab.com.