Efficiency calculation and comparison of fluidic and solid-body power sources using corpuscular radiation

Abstract Research done on a set of simple fluidic (with the fluid used as the ionized medium being air under atmospheric pressure) alphavoltaic cells – small ionizing reactors or “nuclear batteries”, designed in the Faculty of Power and Aerospace Engineering of Warsaw University of Technology, Poland – has shown the possibility of accumulation of usable amount of electric charge. Two simple methods are proposed to describe the fluidic alphavoltaic cells in terms of their efficiency. The results of these methods are presented and compared with the efficiencies of other contemporary types of solid-body (semiconductor junction-based) alpha- and betavoltaic cells. The comparison showed that despite the far-reaching simplicity in design, the designed fluidic cells are still more efficient than some of the solid-body devices that use the alpha type of decay.