Smartphone batteries that may last more than a century

In the recent smartphones we have seen rapid advancements in performance, Camera, gaming capabilities, etc. but out of all one special technology that a lot of people don’t pay their attention is fast charging.

Once there were 20W chargers but now 30W, 40W, 65 Watt chargers are available and in a few months we may see 125 Watt chargers as well then what about future? Will we see smartphones which doesn’t need to charge at all? That’s a fair question.

In this article I’ll explain about how why we may see smartphones whose battery life will be more than the human life.

Can technology further extend to not charging phones?

I guess so because in my schooling age, I saw a news briefing which is about scientists from Italy who are working on Radioactive battery whose life lasts more than our life time.

Thanks to my friend because of his question this struck my mind and I checked about it and here it goes.

1. When we hear about Radioactive elements then the thing that pop in our mind is Nuclear fission or fusion. This Nuclear fission or fusion process takes place in a reactor.
2. Hold your horses, this battery doesn’t require any reactor to produce energy because it uses beta-voltaic process to generate electricity.
3. As the name suggests this battery produces energy from beta radiation in contrary to the usual from photons.
4. This beta-voltaic battery is constructed similar to a photovoltaic cell — Two electrodes are used which are separated by a semiconductor layer.
5. When beta-radiation (high-energy electrons) hits this semiconductor layer energy is produced.

This raise one question — How is it safe?

This is a normal question that pop in everyone’s mind because we know the adverse effects of radioactive elements i.e. they cause cancer.

It turns out this battery is safe to handle and the very reason is it’s process i.e. beta voltaic. This beta radiation can be stopped by using a thin Aluminum layer similar to the water packets used in International Space Station to escape the radiation from the Sun.

Here comes the actual question — How long will it take to discharge entirely?

In this battery, Strontium-90 is used whose half-life is 28.79 years i.e. it takes 28.79 years to decrease its original mass by half and then it continues till the mass becomes zero.

A battery of this kind with 40 grams will take 153 years to decay from 40 grams to 1 gram.

Apart from this there are some other radioactive techniques which have been developed in these years which lasts more than this type.

From these it maybe certain that at some point in the future smartphones may not require a charger but future is unpredictable even after so many years things may go unexpected similar to NASA’s Space shuttle program.