Is this the world’s first quantum battery? Australian scientists say so | Science
Australian scientists have developed the world’s first proof-of-concept quantum battery.
First proposed as a theoretical concept in 2013, quantum batteries use the principles of quantum mechanics to store energy and have the potential to be more efficient than traditional batteries.
Researchers have now created a prototype that charges wirelessly with a laser, which they believe is a major step towards fully functional quantum batteries with fast charging times.
Principal investigator Dr. from CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency. “This is the first prototype to do a full cycle of the battery: in other words, you charge it, you store energy, and you can discharge it,” said James Quach.
In traditional batteries, as the size increases, the charging time also increases. “So your cell phone takes about 30 minutes to charge, and your electric car takes overnight to charge,” Quach said.
In contrast, “quantum batteries have a really weird property; the larger they are, the less time they take to charge,” he said. This is due to a property known as “batch effects”, where quantum cells charge faster when there are more cells.
Quach and colleagues first demonstrated this feature in 2022But there was no way to extract energy from that prototype battery.
New prototype detailed in the magazine Light: Science and ApplicationsIt took femtoseconds (one quadrillionth of a second) to charge and stored energy for nanoseconds (about six times longer).
To put that in perspective, six orders of magnitude for a battery that takes a minute to charge means the battery will stay charged for “several years,” Quach said.
The current prototype has a capacity of only a few billion electron volts, “which is very small and not enough to power anything useful,” he said.
“The next thing we need to do is increase the storage time,” Quach added. “If you want to be able to talk to someone on a cell phone, you want your battery to hold its charge for longer than a few nanoseconds.”
Fully functional quantum batteries that charge almost instantly could eventually be used to power quantum computers or small conventional electronic devices.
Quantum batteries are charged wirelessly with lasers, so another potential application is remote charging.
“For example, you can install a quantum battery in a drone and charge it during flight,” Quach said. “When the technology matures…you will no longer need to stop your car at a gas station to charge; you can charge on the go.”
Prof Andrew White, who runs the quantum technology laboratory at the University of Queensland and was not involved in the research, described it as “a really nice piece of work that shows the quantum battery is more than just an idea, it’s now a working prototype”.
White noted that batteries “won’t show up in any electric vehicles anytime soon,” but “the first place they’ll probably make an impact will actually be quantum computers.”
Quantum batteries could power these computers “consistently at minimal energy cost,” White said.
