City Labs Welcomes Dr. Larry Olsen, Pioneer of Betavoltaic Technology, to its In-house Research Team
Homestead, FL – December 13, 2010 – City Labs, Inc., the pioneering innovator of long-life (20+ years) NanoTritium™ batteries for microelectronics, welcomes Larry C. Olsen, Ph.D. and seminal pioneer of betavoltaic technology, to its in-house research team. Dr. Olsen has been working with City Labs as a consultant since 2009 and is now officially in-house as City Labs’ Director of Research.
Dr. Olsen led the team that developed the first betavoltaic nuclear batteries (Betacel) for cardiac pacemakers at Douglas Laboratories, and was named Tri-Citian of the year in 1970 for this ground- breaking work. Prior to joining City Labs, he was a research scientist with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, a US government laboratory operated by Battelle, where he developed programs in photovoltaics, thermoelectric energy conversion, and radiation detectors. In 2009 he won an R&D 100 Award for transferring thermoelectric technology for energy harvesting. The R&D 100 Awards are presented each year by R&D Magazine to identify the 100 most significant, newly introduced research and development advances in multiple disciplines.
“City Labs is on the cutting edge of customization and new applications for betavoltaic technologies,” said Dr. Olsen. “The innovation taking place at City Labs is creating the future of microelectronic batteries and I am delighted to be a part of the team.”
Dr. Olsen was a Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Washington State University for 26 years. He has published nearly 100 articles in the fields of betavoltaics, photovoltaics and thermoelectric materials. His research also includes solar cells based on silicon, GaAs and CuInSe2 (CIS), MOCVD growth of devices based on GaAs and related III-V compounds.
City Labs’ Tritium batteries enable applications where battery replacement is difficult or impossible, and a source of continuous nanowatt/microwatt power for twenty years or more is crucial. Applications include intelligence-gathering sensors, medical implants, space satellite and probe power sources, trickle charging lithium batteries, semi-passive and active RFIDs (radio frequency identification), subsea sensors and buoys, wireless dust mote networks and field sensors, smart munitions, memory backup and lower power processors (e.g. ASICs, FPGAs, MicroController Units, etc.).
As tested and confirmed by Lockheed Martin, the City Labs battery is resistant to extreme temperature variance (-50 degrees C to +150 degrees C), as well as extreme vibration and altitude, due to the robust architecture of City Labs’ proprietary technology and the use of Tritium, a radioactive isotope. Tritium is the most benign of radioactive isotopes and is a clean technology already used as an illumination source for Exit signs commonly found in schools, theatres, commercial buildings and commercial aircraft.
