Wednesday, March 3     7:00am - 8:00am

Long-life, Self-recharging Batteries

Larry Gadeken, Ph.D.
President
BetaBatt, Inc.

It’s everyone’s dream – a battery that almost never needs replacement. BetaBattery is a porous-silicon diode that converts low levels of beta radiation into electricity. Fueled by tritium, the diode is predicted to have a usable life-span lasting several decades.

 

Larry Gadeken is a leader in an engineering field known as betavoltaics, which uses semiconductors to capture energy from radioactive materials and turn it into usable electricity. In this presentation, Dr. Gadeken will discuss the development of 3D tritiated diodes that are assembled into a ‘charger’ to continuously maintain the charge of thin-film, rechargeable lithium batteries. He will also review some applications for this micro-Watt power source.

 

Larry Gadeken received his Ph.D. in experimental nuclear physics from the University of Iowa. He subsequently held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Liverpool in England and at Queen's University in Canada. He spent 25 years in the oil well logging industry with Schlumberger and Halliburton, where he researched a variety of nuclear well logging techniques and developed widely-used commercial services generating millions of dollars in revenue. His current developments have been supported through SBIR Phase I and Phase II grants from the National Science Foundation and by a pre-commercialization award from the Texas Emerging Technology Fund.

 

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