Miami-based tritium nuclear technology developer City Labs has been awarded a $1.5 million contract by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the company said this week.
City Labs said in a press release the funding, under DARPA’s Rads to Watts program, will support the development of a new class of high-power radiation voltaics energy systems. Radiation voltaics energy systems, referred to as radiovoltaic, are devices that convert nuclear radiation into electricity using semiconductor junctions.
The company will build on its commercially available NanoTritium platform to develop “watt-class radiovoltaic [radiation voltaics] unit cells targeting system-level performance of 10 watts per kilogram,” according to the release. City Labs will work with Microlink Devices to develop this.
The program also allows City Labs to pursue a new class of tritium metal hydride materials.
“The resulting systems are designed for missions where conventional power sources fall short, including deep-space operations, national security platforms, and long-duration autonomous systems,” City Labs said. “Potential commercial applications include remote sensing, infrastructure monitoring and advanced medical devices.”
The DARPA Rads to Watts program aims to explore new ways for directly converting nuclear radiation energy into electricity, with a large focus on radiation voltaics.
City Labs said it is the only U.S. company that holds a general license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to manufacture and distribute commercial tritium betavoltaic batteries. Tritium betavoltaic batteries are a type of solid-state nuclear battery that generates continuous power through the natural radioactive decay of tritium.