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27 Apr 2006
A laser-based technique for manufacturing Bragg gratings has been adapted to provide a potential source for on-chip radioisotope power.
Hydrogen-loading, a technique commonly used in the manufacture of fiber Bragg gratings, is being adapted for nuclear micro power. By substituting hydrogen for its radioactive isotope tritium, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Toronto believe the approach could be used to produce embeddable nuclear micro-batteries (Applied Physics Letters 88 134101).
"Considering that tritium is chemically identical to hydrogen, a similar laser process can also lock tritium in glass to provide a stable and on-chip isotope power source," Kevin Chen, one of the researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, told optics.org. "Although this result is expected from a perspective of photonics, it opens a door to perform nuclear engineering on chip scales."
Tritium is a beta emitter, decaying to produce 5.7 keV electrons with a half-life of 12.7 years and a power output of 24 W/kg. It is readily available at a low cost and has been widely used in self-lighting devices.
The researchers locked tritium into 8 micron-thick silica films containing 3% Ge, a glass used commonly in fiber optics, using high pressure tritium loading and a KrF laser emitting at 248 nm.
"A well-known technology developed in photonics can now be applied to nuclear engineering for chip-scale application," said Chen, whose background is in Bragg grating manufacture. "When a common, shared thread is found, technology advances are likely to be made by taking advantage of expertise in both scientific fields."
The team is now using a photolithography mask in tandem with the laser locking scheme to selectively lock tritium into silica glass films on the micron scale.
In terms of applications, the researchers say that tritium micro-power sources and high energy electron sources at the micron scale could be integrated on-chip to provide long-lasting power for computer chips, micromotors, implantable medical devices, self-charging MEMS actuation and remote sensors devices such as ionization sensors.
The work was performed by Kevin Chen's group at Pittsburgh, in collaboration with Nazir Kherani's group at the University of Toronto.
Author
Darius Nikbin is Science/Technology Reporter on Optics.org and Opto & Laser Europe magazine.
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