University of Adelaide scientist charges ahead with quantum battery that can charge in a flash
WHILE charge times of all our gizmos are making impressive stride — an University of Adelaide scientist has plans to make the world’s first battery that could leave those charge times for dead!
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A UNIVERSITY of Adelaide scientist plans to build the world’s first quantum battery – a “revolutionary” invention that could be charged in less than a second.
Dr James Quach joined the university this week, having been lured back from overseas with a four-year Ramsay Fellowship.
While others have set their sights on quantum computers, Dr Quach believes the same principles can be more readily applied to batteries, enabling “exponentially faster charging rates”.
“It’s a revolutionary step in quantum technology,” Dr Quach, pictured, says.
“What we’re talking about is instantaneous charging at the end of the day, which would be really cool.
“Just by having more quantum batteries, you’re going to charge faster and faster.”
It’s mind-bending stuff that violates the conventional laws of physics.
Dr Quach says quantum mechanics behaves differently to what we see around us.
“When two particles interact, after they interact they sort of know about each other, even if they’re separated by large distance. If something happens to one particle it has influence on the other.”
Scientists such as Dr Quach believe this can be used to great advantage, quickly transferring energy to lots of batteries all at once.
The more batteries, the quicker they charge.
“If one quantum battery takes one hour to charge, then two would take 30 minutes, three would take 20 minutes, and so on,” Dr Quach said.
“If you had 10 thousand batteries, they would all charge in less than a second.”
The quantum battery would replace conventional batteries in electronic devices and then ultimately provide new storage solutions for the energy sector.
But Dr Quach will have to start small, because quantum mechanics operates at the scale of atoms and molecules.
IBM has already built a small-scale quantum computer, showing the science can be applied to modern devices.
Dr Quach says a similar approach could be taken to change the way we store energy.
“The quantum battery, in my opinion, and most people would agree, is a lot easier to achieve than quantum computing,” Dr Quach says.
“Computers are a lot more complicated than batteries.
“So it’s one of the lower hanging fruit that we can hopefully realise over the next few years.”