Modern batteries have come a long way in their 224-year history. Instead of the metal disks and piles of cloth soaked in salt water that Alessandro Volta used, we now have batteries the size of a graham cracker that can last for days without needing to be recharged.
But what are the limitations of the devices currently on the market? What technological challenges must be overcome to break through those limitations? And when will those hurdles be cleared? What does the future hold for energy storage?
A small group of scientists around the world are working on the answer: battery technology that uses the laws of quantum physics rather than classical physics to hold a charge. It’s a long way off, but Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was electricity.
A basic and well-loved battery
A battery is a technology that uses chemical reactions to produce electrical energy. Household batteries generate electrical energy by the flow of electrons through a circuit. Various battery cells have been developed over the centuries. Benjamin Franklin is believed to have invented the term “electric battery” in the 1860s. A letter from 1749He ended with an amusing comment about the wonders of electricity.
A turkey will be killed for our dinner by electric shock and roasted on an electric jack in front of a fire lighted by an electric bottle, and we will drink on an electric bumper, under the discharge of a gun from an electric battery, with a prayer for the health of all the famous electricians of England, France and Germany.
After several different battery cells named after the scientists who developed them using different acid and metal chemistries, the lead-acid battery was born in 1859. It was the first battery that could be charged by reversing current through the system. In the late 20th century, lithium-ion batteries became popular and have remained essentially popular ever since. They use various combinations of lithium combined with other metals and phosphates. However, throughout the history of modern batteries, the basic principles of the chemical reactions that create electricity have remained the same.
Okay, forget about batteries. What on earth is “quantum”?
A quick, high-level review of quantum physics: Particles in a quantum state behave according to a completely different set of rules than everything we see around us, from the water in the clouds to the blood vessels running through our veins. Particles enter a quantum state under extreme conditions, such as in a vacuum at very low temperatures. In these conditions, particles can act like multiple things at once, which helps them perform things like complex mathematical operations (Like a quantum computer) and time travel Yes, it is possible (in a sense).
In quantum systems, EntanglementThe phenomenon in which two or more quantum particles define the properties of each other. In quantum computingThe atoms in the array are like bits in a regular computer, holding the information needed for a particular operation. These atoms are called quantum bits, or qubits.
But quantum operations are delicate: the moment a value in a quantum system becomes final, the operation collapses, and the whole system – say, the atoms in an array – reverts to a classical state.
Quantum states persist for long periods of time. Let’s start with a state of matter called a time crystal. Proposed in 2012 As physicists showed earlier this year, Lasts for at least 40 minutesabout 10 million times longer than any other known crystal. While these crystals are a far cry from quantum batteries, they do show how short-lived some quantum systems typically are — a key problem to solve if we are to rely on such regimes for power supplies.
So how do the laws of quantum mechanics apply to batteries, a technology that, when charged, allows you to continue reading this article and beyond?
Currently envisioned quantum batteries
Like regular batteries, quantum batteries store energy as you’d expect, but that’s where the similarities end: instead of the chemical reactions that charge and consume a battery’s stored energy, quantum batteries are powered by quantum entanglement, an action that more closely couples a battery with its power source.
“A quantum battery consists of many quantum cells that act like one big quantum battery,” Juyeon Jim, a quantum researcher at Seoul National University in South Korea, told Gizmodo in an email. “The challenge is how to maintain the quantum properties over time.”
Because quantum batteries share the same properties as quantum computers, major technical challenges must be overcome to make the technology a reality outside of a lab environment: physicists must figure out how to keep quantum systems delicate outside the most carefully controlled lab environments. Room temperature superconductors It’s like the Holy Grail, but today it’s the only Those who claim such discoveries I had a job The mistake became apparent within a few months..
“Thermodynamics at equilibrium sets no limits on how quickly energy can be converted into heat and work,” wrote a team of five scientists in a recent colloquium on quantum batteries. host on the preprint server arXiv. “It therefore seems natural to seek thermodynamic quantum advantage in out-of-equilibrium quantum systems.”
The research group further noted that quantum entanglement is related to how quickly energy can be stored in a many-body quantum system, a discovery that has spurred research into quantum systems as energy storage devices.
In 2018, a team modeled the Dicke quantum cell, the first to be proposed to exist in a solid-state structure, 2022The team tested the basic framework of a quantum battery in a laboratory environment using targets, mirrors and laser light.
Recent experiments have addressed this issue.
Late last year, a team of quantum researchers proposed a system that could charge quantum batteries in an indefinite causal order (ICO).Published in Physics Review Letter—We hypothesized that a billing system using ICOs could be superior to traditional billing protocols.
“Roughly speaking, ICO can be used to construct quantum processes that are not possible in standard quantum theory, where the causal order must be clear or fixed,” Yuanbo Chen, a researcher at the University of Tokyo and lead author of the study, told Gizmodo in an email. “This flexibility allows for a greater variety of quantum processes, some of which may exhibit advantageous and interesting properties.”
“We saw significant improvements in both the energy stored in the system and the thermal efficiency, and, perhaps counterintuitively, we discovered a surprising effect of interaction that was the opposite of what we would expect: a lower-power charger could provide more energy at higher efficiency than a comparable higher-power charger using the same equipment,” Chen said. I said at the time.
The variety of experimental setups for quantum battery systems, both proposed and realized, means that there are many different paths to innovate in the design of such futuristic technology. Last month, a team from the University of Gdansk and the University of Calgary was suggested The quantum battery charging system maximizes the amount of energy stored in the battery while minimizing the amount of energy consumed (or lost) in the charging process. Part of the team’s redesign is that the quantum battery and its charger are coupled to the same reservoir, creating an interference-like pattern to improve the efficiency of energy transfer between the two. The team estimates that the new charging process will allow the battery to store four times more energy than with a traditional charger.
“In a quantum battery, molecules or atoms come together and act like waves, whereas in a conventional battery, the molecules and atoms act like individual particles,” James Quack, a quantum researcher at the University of Adelaide in Australia, told Gizmodo in an email. “This collective behavior is the basis for the ultra-wide charging properties of quantum batteries, allowing large quantum battery capacities to be charged in a short time.”
2022In 2010, Quach and his team tested the basic framework of a quantum battery by placing a molecular dye called Lumogen F orange in a tiny cavity and shining pulses of light on it to see how the energy transmitted by the photons could be stored. The team found that the system charged surprisingly quickly, and that larger systems should charge faster in general.
“Currently, it takes femtoseconds to picoseconds to charge a quantum battery, which stores about one microjoule of energy over nanoseconds to milliseconds,” Quach said. “While this doesn’t seem like a long time, the storage time is actually more than a million times longer than the charging time. By comparison, this is equivalent to a conventional battery that takes minutes to charge and can hold its charge for hundreds of years.”
As Reporter New ScientistSome physicists theorize that the charging time of a quantum battery is inversely proportional to the number of qubits in the system — meaning the larger the battery, the faster it will charge.
So… when will we get the Quantum Battery?
Research into quantum batteries is getting a lot of attention, but it’s still in its early stages. The promise is exciting, but what the technology’s final design will be remains an open question. Commercialization? That’s still far from the horizon for even the most business-minded physicists out there.
The biggest challenge is maintaining the quantum state as we scale up quantum systems. Quach believes that quantum batteries could be used as mobile power sources in cell phones and cars, but many quantum systems currently require very cold, noise-free environments to maintain their state (as an aside, Quach’s 2022 experimental setup was operating at room temperature). We don’t want to discourage you, but Nuclear fusion This is probably closer to reality than the quantum batteries we have in our devices.
Many skeptical reporters are reluctant to admit it, but I would like to retract my statement. The only thing better than being right is making the world a better place at the expense of being wrong. Quantum batteries can charge faster and more efficiently than conventional devices, and they can be integrated with emerging quantum technologies that are being used for advanced simulations and measurements. While a fully functioning quantum battery has yet to be demonstrated, a recent colloquium suggested that such technology could revolutionize the way we collect, deliver and control energy. It could potentially save humanity thousands of dollars in lost revenue. Dependence on electricityEnergy storage could make a quantum leap forward.
more: Physicists bombarded the Fibonacci sequence to make quantum computers work
