Yannick Verbelen
Appearances
Global News Podcast
US sends diplomats to Syria
It just looks like a tiny piece of glass that's a few millimetres in size and only 200 micrometer stick. So if you would see it on the street, you wouldn't even bother picking it up because it really does look unspectacular. And the key is in this very unique radioisotope, carbon-14, which is actually a naturally occurring radioisotope. It's formed in the atmosphere.
Global News Podcast
US sends diplomats to Syria
It's absorbed by plants, which we then eat. So we also contain some carbon-14, of course, in very small concentrations. Where it becomes interesting is that carbon can take many forms. But if you compress it under very high temperature, you can actually turn it into diamond. But if you start with radioactive carbon, such as carbon-14, then you can indeed create a radioactive diamond.
Global News Podcast
US sends diplomats to Syria
So a diamond beta-voltaic is essentially a type of solar cell that consists of a radioactive diamond that uses its own radioactivity to generate a tiny amount of electricity. It is absolutely safe because diamond is one of the hardest naturally occurring materials on the planet. So once the carbon-14 is locked in its diamond structure, it doesn't leak out. There is no chemicals inside of it.
Global News Podcast
US sends diplomats to Syria
There is no electrolyte. It is actually a piece of diamond. Currently, we're just growing them very, very slowly with chemical vapor deposition. And it takes a long time, hours or days, depending on how large and how thick we want them to be.
Global News Podcast
US sends diplomats to Syria
So one of the challenges now is to continue the journey and see how we can upscale the technology to make it available to more applications, to improve the power output and also to tackle some challenges such as, for example, collection, recycling and so on.
Global News Podcast
US sends diplomats to Syria
It just looks like a tiny piece of glass. So if you would see it on the street, you wouldn't even bother picking it up because it really does look unspectacular.