Radiation-Proof Batteries Could Power the Hunt for Ghost Particles

Deep underground, where cosmic rays cannot reach and even a single stray particle can ruin an experiment, scientists face an unlikely enemy: the humble battery. A new perspective published in the journal Ionics argues that the lithium-ion cells we rely on everywhere else are fundamentally unsuited to the world’s most sensitive physics facilities, and it lays out a detailed roadmap for replacing them with radiation-tolerant composite batteries. The proposed India-based Neutrino Observatory, or INO, a planned 50,000-tonne detector buried 1.2 kilometres beneath a mountain in southern India, emerges as the ideal proving ground for this technology. According to the review, led by Ashutosh Das of the National Institute of Technology Rourkela together with colleagues in India and South Africa, the stakes go far beyond convenience: the success of multi-decade neutrino experiments may depend on power systems that can survive where ordinary batteries quietly fall apart.

The problem begins with what radiation does to battery chemistry. Gamma rays, the high-energy photons that pervade accelerator halls, ionise the organic solvents inside a lithium-ion cell, cleaving chemical bonds and generating reactive radicals. In documented tests using cobalt-60 sources, a standard electrolyte of lithium hexafluorophosphate dissolved in ethylene carbonate and dimethyl carbonate began to discolour after doses as low as 0.8 megarad, and spectroscopic analysis revealed the formation of organophosphorus fragments and hydrofluoric acid, which corrode electrodes and current collectors. By 5.7 megarad, polymerisation products had thickened the electrolyte and cut its ionic conductivity by more than half. Perhaps most insidiously, the damage is latent: cells filled with irradiated electrolyte showed capacity close to zero two weeks after exposure, at a cumulative dose of 10 megarad, even though they had appeared functional immediately after irradiation.

Neutrons inflict a different kind of wound. Rather than ionising molecules, they knock atoms out of place in crystal lattices, creating displacement cascades that disorder electrode structures. In one study, lithium cobalt oxide cathodes exposed to neutron fluences between 10¹² and 10¹⁵ neutrons per square centimetre grew by 36 to 45 percent in particle size, accompanied by crystal disorder detectable by X-ray diffraction and charge-transfer resistance increases of 30 to 50 percent. Thermal neutrons also react with the naturally occurring lithium-6 isotope, producing helium and tritium that locally heat the electrolyte and drive gas generation. When gamma and neutron fields combine, the review notes, the effects are synergistic: capacity losses of 8 to 50 percent have been measured at doses up to a few megarad, along with premature calendar-life loss and structural changes to separators and binders.

No component escapes. The microporous polyethylene or polypropylene separators, just 25 micrometres thick, undergo cross-linking and chain scission under gamma irradiation, with new carbonyl bands appearing in infrared spectra and pores coalescing in ways that impede lithium-ion transport and encourage dendrite formation. Polyvinylidene fluoride binders lose 20 to 40 percent of their adhesion strength at 10 megarad through dehydrofluorination, and irradiated binders dragged capacity retention in lithium iron phosphate cells down to 87.6 percent after 350 cycles, compared with 90.9 percent for controls. Hydrofluoric acid attacks the aluminium oxide passivation on current collectors, more than doubling contact resistance above 5 megarad. Even thermal interface materials degrade, developing hot spots 5 to 10 degrees Celsius warmer during cycling, which accelerates the very decomposition reactions that radiation started.

The demands of high-energy physics facilities make these weaknesses untenable. At CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, collision debris can deliver total ionising doses reaching several gigarad over the machine’s lifetime; near the high-luminosity interaction points, estimates reach 54 megarad at just 2.5 centimetres from the beam. Some 170 uninterruptible power supply units, carrying more than 280 tonnes of batteries, sit underground to keep superconducting magnets, quench protection systems and beam loss monitors alive during grid failures, with a ten-minute autonomy window. Future high-energy upgrades contemplate lithium-titanate packs of roughly 520 kilowatt-hours per sector to buffer peak powers of a few megawatts. In such environments, the review argues, radiation-tolerant composite batteries could form compact nodes placed directly in high-radiation zones, slashing the cable mass that today’s architecture demands.

Underground neutrino observatories present the opposite challenge: not brutal dose rates but extreme longevity and purity. IceCube, embedded 1.45 to 2.45 kilometres deep in Antarctic ice, powers its 5,160 digital optical modules entirely through copper cables from the surface, each module drawing a mere 5 watts. The proposed INO cavern, shielded by 1 to 2 kilometres of rock, will see a lifetime total ionising dose well below 10⁴ gray, essentially zero neutron background, and a residual environment dominated by faint cosmic-muon-induced signals and natural radioactivity from the surrounding granite. Yet its iron calorimeter detector, built from three modules of 16 by 16 by roughly 14.5 metres, will pack 27,000 resistive plate chambers and 3.6 million readout channels whose front-end electronics, based on ANUSPARSH-III ASICs, together demand about 162 kilowatts. All of that power currently must travel 2.1 kilometres through an access tunnel, introducing resistive losses, voltage drops and vulnerability to grid transients.

The cleanliness requirement is what turns batteries from an engineering detail into a physics-critical component. Neutrinos, the nearly massless, electrically neutral particles that interact only through the weak nuclear force, are so elusive that they pass through entire planets unnoticed. Detecting them requires environments so pristine that any gas release, electromagnetic interference or cable-induced heating can mimic the faint signatures of real neutrino interactions. Resistive plate chambers, the gas-filled detectors at the heart of INO’s calorimeter, are especially sensitive to outgassing. Conventional lithium-ion and polymer cells vent gases, risk thermal runaway and degrade over time, none of which is compatible with a detector that must run for 20 to 30 years without maintenance in inaccessible caverns. A decentralised network of sealed, radiation-hard micro-battery nodes, the authors contend, would eliminate kilometres of cabling while preserving the ultra-low-background conditions the physics demands.

The composite solutions described in the review attack each failure mode directly. Polymer matrices such as polyethylene, ethylene-propylene rubber, Nomex and polyphenylene sulfide, reinforced with ceramic nanofillers like montmorillonite, silica, alumina or titania, act as defect sinks and radical scavengers in separators and casings; one ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene-silica nanocomposite separator achieved 575 percent electrolyte uptake, ionic conductivity of 1.60 millisiemens per centimetre and stable delivery of 116.7 milliamp-hours per gram even at 8C rates. Nanocomposite solid electrolytes loaded with carbon nanotubes and graphene raise ionic conductivity by nearly two orders of magnitude while quenching the radicals that drive radiolysis, and self-healing polymers can repair radiation-induced chain scission while maintaining conductivity above 10⁻³ siemens per centimetre. Electrode composites incorporating perovskite halides and caesium lead bromide quantum dots resist the cation mixing and particle growth that plague nickel-rich cathodes, while boron nitride and graphene thermal composites, conducting up to 38 to 43 watts per metre-kelvin, dissipate heat that would otherwise accumulate in poorly ventilated tunnels.

Most striking are the hybrid nuclear-electrochemical designs. Cerium-doped gadolinium oxide-silica glass-ceramic scintillators can convert beta particles from sources such as ruthenium-106 or strontium-90 into photons that drive silicon photodiodes, trickle-charging an electrochemical storage element. One such device produced 48 nanowatts of output with less than 4 percent degradation after 5 megarad of electron irradiation, projecting a roughly 15-year lifetime, far outperforming pure betavoltaics that lose 68 percent of capacity without scintillator shielding. For wireless sensor clusters monitoring temperature, humidity, gas composition and structural integrity across a detector the size of INO’s calorimeter, such maintenance-free nodes could operate for 15 to 30 years or more, drawing on ambient or built-in radiation for charging.

Getting from laboratory composites, currently at technology readiness levels 3 to 4, to deployable hardware will require qualification protocols unlike anything used for space or nuclear applications. The authors point to CERN’s CHARM facility, which reproduces realistic mixed radiation fields and could irradiate entire battery modules under operating conditions, alongside in-situ electrochemical testing with synchrotron-based operando X-ray diffraction and Geant4 simulations that predict non-ionising energy loss before physical testing. Acceptance criteria would demand at least 85 percent capacity retention after facility-equivalent doses, internal resistance rises below 50 percent, outgassing under 1 percent of cell volume, calendar lives beyond 20 to 30 years, seismic resilience and sub-10-millisecond UPS transfer. Because INO’s radiation levels are modest, requiring tolerance of only 10⁴ to 10⁵ gray, the review recommends lithium lanthanum zirconium oxide-based all-solid-state micro-batteries with graphene and carbon nanotube scavengers, perovskite quantum-dot electrodes and Nomex or polyphenylene sulfide casings, paired with betavoltaic trickle-charged sensor nodes. A successful demonstration in INO’s pristine cavern, the authors conclude, would make the observatory the first major physics facility to run on decentralised, cable-minimised power, establishing a template for underground experiments worldwide and proving that the quest to catch ghost particles may hinge on materials tough enough to shrug off radiation itself.

Subject of Research: Radiation-tolerant composite battery materials for energy storage in high-energy physics and underground neutrino observatory environments

Article Title: Radiation-tolerant composites batteries in high energy physics facilities: paving the pathway for india-based neutrino observatory: a state-of-the-art perspective

Article References: Das, A., Ghosh, A., Ray, B. C., Shrivastava, P., & Msomi, V. (2026). Radiation-tolerant composites batteries in high energy physics facilities: paving the pathway for india-based neutrino observatory: a state-of-the-art perspective. Ionics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11581-026-07544-6

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s11581-026-07544-6

Keywords: radiation-tolerant batteries, composite materials, lithium-ion degradation, India-based Neutrino Observatory, neutrino detection, high-energy physics, solid-state electrolytes, betavoltaic batteries, CERN, graphene nanofillers, perovskite quantum dots, radiation damage