The nuclear battery has many advantages, including high energy density, stable performance, no manual intervention etc., which can be widely utilized in cases requiring long-term reliable power supply. Among them, the Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTG) is the earliest used and the most technically matured one, while betavoltaic battery is now commercialized. However, there are still some problems including self-absorption effect, low energy conversion efficiency and severe radiation damage which restrict the application of betavoltaic batteries. Additionally, for an actual nuclear battery, it should be noticed that the component and density of the source will be changed because the radiation source decays continually, which leads to the electrical performance decline. In this review, the major events in nuclear battery development are listed on a timeline, and the principles and applications of different types of nuclear batteries are also introduced. For betavoltaic battery, the existence of self-absorption effect is pointed out as an important scientific problem, and for batteries with ⁶³Ni and TiT₂ source, the time-related electrical properties are also obtained. This paper also pointed out that, fine and precise calculations are very crucial in the optimized designing processes for a particular structure of the practical nuclear battery. Finally, researching assumptions including combining the source and the energy converting material and the use of energy converting structures with heavier isotopes are presented, which are benefit to solve the self-absorption problem, rise the output power of the nuclear battery and reduce the influence of radiation damage.

In this work, a compact phoswich detector consisting of a cylindrical LaBr₃(Ce) principal crystal and a well-shaped CsI(Tl) sub-crystal was designed and assembled to identify and reject Compton scattering in the LaBr₃(Ce). Two different crystals coupled to the same photomultiplier tube (PMT). The energy deposition in each layer from incident radiation is then determined via digital pulse shape analysis of the PMT’s pulses. The results of Geant4 simulations were used to verify the performance of the pulse shape identification and the effect of Compton background suppression. Experimental tests were conducted on the detector prototype using a ⁶⁰Co gamma source, and the result shown that the detector background suppression coefficient was 2.33(1) which achieved the expected purpose of twice as much as the Compton background was suppressed.

Investigation of fusion reaction mechanism is one of important topics in recent years. In comparison with radioactive ion beam, the beam intensities of weakly bound nuclei are orders of magnitude higher. The study of the reaction mechanism induced weakly bound nuclei can further explore the coupling effect of breakup, transfer and other reaction channels on the fusion process. A lot of experimental data have shown that there are many interesting phenomena in the fusion reaction induced by weakly bound nuclei at energies near the Coulomb barrier, such as "enhancement below the Coulomb barrier'' and "suppression above the Coulomb barrier'' of the complete fusion cross section. In this paper, we mainly review the researches of the suppression phenomenon and discuss the possible reasons for the suppression. The main reason for the suppression phenomenon of the complete fusion cross section is that the weakly bound nuclei break up before entering the fusion barrier, thus reducing the incident flux of the complete fusion reaction channel. At the same time, the experimental results show that the degree of suppression may be related to the mass number and structure of target nuclei. There are three kinds of methods to measure the fusion reaction induced by weakly bound nuclei, which are $\gamma$ ray measurement, charged particle measurement and charged particle -$\gamma$ ray coincidence measurement. The charged particle -$\gamma$ ray coincidence measurement has obvious advantages in reaction channel identification. This paper introduces the three measurement methods and the researches using these three methods at home and abroad, including the researches of our groups. In addition, the recent theoretical research work on fusion reactions induced by weakly bound nuclei is also introduced.