[hashin]

I can see that they are emphasizing on the #DiamondBattery hashtag so that general public will be hooked and share it more, but why haven't they given any hints (mildly technical) to the capabilities of the battery?

// A team of physicists and chemists from the University of Bristol have grown a man-made diamond that, when placed in a radioactive field, is able to generate a small electrical current.//

When I read the "small electrical current", the physicist in me was naturally assuming a very small current of the order of pico to nano amperes (without being conservative) - essentially useless. Metrics like the half life of the battery doesn't make any sense at all if the power or current rating is not specified. Current rating is something you could trust, that it will end up as a viable product.

This would appeal more if they can give a direct link to their research paper.

[extrapickles]

Current off the shelf betavoltaic batteries produce 50-350 nA @ 2.4v. I don't expect them to be producing much more than that.

[sannysanoff]

They state 15 Joule/day per gram, this gives 0.000174W

[berntb]

Is that an idiom, or are they really "off the shelf" and not specially built for every space probe?

[extrapickles]

They are "off the shelf" in that you can give them a call and in 6 weeks have one. I suspect they obtain and load the nuclear material for your order, but the rest of the device is stocked as it involves custom semiconductors which have fairly large minimum orders.

These are the class of battery that would replace the CMOS battery in something that can never lose power to its RAM, rather than the much more powerful RTGs that space probes use.

[aminorex]

Part of a spectrum from MEMs through pacemaker batteries, Cassini-style RTG, pebble-bed reactors, up to massive GE/Siemens style LWRs. It's a remarkably scalable tech, both up- and down- scale.

[XaspR8d]

CityLabs manufactures specific product lines that aren't special-built.[1] The price is still "contact us" but they are purchaseable and I've heard of a few popping up on marketplaces before.

[1] - http://www.citylabs.net/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wr...