Modeling of a Self Reciprocating Cantilever for a MEMS Nuclear Battery Powered by an Alpha Source

A nuclear battery is a device that converts energy from radioactive decay to electricity. Self-reciprocating cantilevers is a newly developed scheme in which one of the electrodes is elastically deformable. A model has been developed before to model the oscillator to provide understanding of the behavior of such a device, and to help explore potential applications. Previous self-reciprocating cantilevers work concentrated on low energy beta emitters. In this work, the previously developed electromechanical model has been applied to self-reciprocating cantilevers powered by alpha sources. In this work, important device characteristics such as electrode separation, contact time, generated voltage, energy stored, and efficiency are calculated and compared with a beta powered self-reciprocating cantilever. Analysis proved that alpha sources provide better device performance compared with beta sources. For a Cu cantilever, an oscillation period shorter by one order of magnitude was calculated using a ²¹⁰Po source compared with a ⁶³Ni source. It was also shown that self-reciprocating cantilevers powered by alpha sources can effectively be scaled down to MEMS versions due to the short range of the alpha particles.