{"id":548244,"date":"2026-03-18T11:41:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T11:41:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/548244\/"},"modified":"2026-03-18T11:41:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T11:41:11","slug":"is-this-the-worlds-first-quantum-battery-australian-scientists-say-so-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/548244\/","title":{"rendered":"Is this the world\u2019s first quantum battery? Australian scientists say so | Science"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australian scientists have developed what they say is the world\u2019s first proof-of-concept quantum battery.<\/p>\n

Quantum batteries, first proposed as a theoretical concept in 2013, use the principles of quantum mechanics to store energy, and have the potential to be more efficient than conventional batteries.<\/p>\n

Researchers have now created a prototype \u2013 charged wirelessly with a laser \u2013 that they believe is a major step towards fully functioning quantum batteries with rapid charging times.<\/p>\n

Lead researcher Dr James Quach of the CSIRO, Australia\u2019s national science agency, said: \u201cIt\u2019s the first prototype which does a full cycle of a battery: in other words, you charge it, you store energy, and you can discharge it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In conventional batteries, charge time increases with size. \u201cThat\u2019s why your mobile phone takes about 30 minutes to charge and your electric car takes overnight to charge,\u201d Quach said.<\/p>\n

In contrast, \u201cquantum batteries have this really peculiar property where the larger they are, the less time they take to charge\u201d, he said. That\u2019s due to a feature known as \u201ccollective effects\u201d, in which quantum cells charge faster when there are more cells involved.<\/p>\n

Quach and his colleagues first demonstrated this property in 2022<\/a>, but there was no way to extract energy from that prototype battery.<\/p>\n

\"AA researcher holds the tiny prototype quantum battery. Photograph: CSIRO<\/p>\n

The new prototype, detailed in the journal Light: Science & Applications<\/a>, took femtoseconds (quadrillionths of a second) to charge, and stored the energy for nanoseconds \u2013 about six orders of magnitudes longer.<\/p>\n

To put that into perspective, Quach said, for a battery that took one minute to charge, six orders of magnitude would mean it would stay charged for \u201ca couple of years\u201d.<\/p>\n

The current prototype has a capacity of only a few billion electron volts, \u201cwhich is very small and not enough to power anything useful\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we need to do next is \u2026 to increase the storage time,\u201d Quach added. \u201cYou want your battery to hold charge longer than a few nanoseconds if you want to be able to talk to someone on a mobile phone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fully functioning quantum batteries that charge almost instantaneously could eventually be used to power quantum computers or small conventional electronic devices.<\/p>\n

Quantum batteries are charged wirelessly with lasers, so another potential application is in remote charging.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou could put a quantum battery, for example, on a drone \u2026 and you could charge it while it\u2019s in flight,\u201d Quach said. \u201cOnce the technology matures \u2026 you would no longer need to stop your car at a petrol station to charge it up; you could charge it on the go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prof Andrew White, who leads the quantum technology laboratory at the University of Queensland and was not involved in the research, described it as \u201ca really nice piece of work showing that the quantum battery is more than an idea, it\u2019s now a working prototype\u201d.<\/p>\n

White noted that the batteries were \u201cnot going to turn up in any electric vehicles anytime soon\u201d, but \u201cprobably the first place that it\u2019ll have an impact is actually for quantum computers\u201d.<\/p>\n

Quantum batteries could provide energy \u201ccoherently \u2026 with the minimum energy cost to these computers\u201d, White said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australian scientists have developed what they say is the world\u2019s first proof-of-concept quantum battery. Quantum batteries, first proposed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-548244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}