Future products will supplement these with energy-harvesting technologies such as solar cells or piezoelectric generators driven by vibration. In the longer term, “nuclear” batteries that use direct energy conversion of nuclear radiation may provide power in sufficient quantity, and for years at a time regardless of ambient temperature.
为未来的无线传感器调查了几种新电源技术。最初，这些技术将为化学电池提供补充作用。这些新来源连续提供较少的电力，并将与提供储能的化学电池一起使用。这些新技术最终可能会接管传感器电源的整个作用，从而实现了化学电池的显着优势。
Here comes the sun
Solar cells—which perform direct energy conversion of solar radiation—is one technology that has been used experimentally and in field trials of wireless sensors. It is already common in supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA), as well as in infrastructure applications, such as remote weather monitoring. For wireless field devices, the limitations of solar cells are that they may not harvest sufficient energy in all applications.
压电功率收获使用环境机械振动来产生少量存储在电容器或电池中的电力。风险公司已经尝试使用这些电源，可以形成与电池类似的因素。目前，这些用品对于某些工业应用而言是不可行的。
Nuclear direct energy conversion (DEC) devices sound frightening, but in fact, are very similar to solar cells. Instead of solar radiation, nuclear DECs use radiation provided by the decay of a radioisotope embedded within the battery. This radiation falls on a semiconductor device similar to a solar cell, and directly generates electric power.
核设备的主要优点是主要能量来源是放射性同位素，其可以具有很长的寿命。由于反应是核不下的，而不是化学品，因此不管环境温度如何 - 在工业应用中的化学电池中的显着优势。然而，还必须选择该同位素，使得发出的辐射具有足够的能量，在小空间中捕获是最佳的，并且不会在装置外辐射。这将潜在的同位素限制为发出α或β颗粒辐射的潜在同位素，这具有非常有限的穿透能力。此外，放射性衰减必须形成一个稳定的元素，其不再通过进一步衰变发射有害辐射。符合这些标准的两种同位素是氚，氢的同位素，镍镍63，镍的同位素。这些产品的半衰期分别为12.3和100.2岁。这意味着同位素的供应将在制造后的12或100年后发出初始辐射的一半。
The challenge of nuclear batteries has been to increase the efficiency of conversion. In order to do this, researchers have developed microelectronic structures that are optimized for capture of the radiation. Current research focuses on building honeycomb structures for the semiconductor material. Researchers in this area envision tritium batteries the size of a common “D” cell battery that could provide 1 to 5 milliwatts of power, even after 12 years of service. This is far more than is required to drive most wireless sensors.
工业市场不足以推动完全新的电池技术的发展。但幸运的是，其他市场段也可以为这些高级电源提供应用。
