Modern batteries have come a long way in their 224-year history. By Alessandro Volta Instead of a pile of metal discs and salt-water-soaked cloths, we now have a graham cracker-sized battery that can last for days before needing to be recharged.
But what is the upper limit for devices currently on the market? What kind of technological challenges must be overcome to break that limitation, and when will those obstacles be resolved? What is the future of energy storage?
A small group of scientists around the world are working to find the answer. A battery technology that uses the laws of quantum physics rather than classical physics to maintain a charge. There is a long, long way to go, but Rome was not built in a day, and electricity was not provided all at once.
A beloved basic battery
A battery is a technology that produces electrical energy using chemical reactions. Household batteries produce electrical energy through the flow of electrons through a circuit. A variety of battery cells have been developed over the centuries. Benjamin Franklin is credited with inventing the term ‘electric battery’. 1749 letterHe concluded with a fun riff on the wonders of electricity.
A turkey will be killed by electric shock for our dinner. Before being roasted by an electric jack and set on fire by an electric bottle; When the health of all famous electricians in England, France and Germany drinks from an electric bumper while a gun is discharged from an electric battery.
Take a quick look at a few different battery cells, named after the scientists who developed them using the chemical reactions of various acids and metals. In 1859, we had the first lead-acid battery with the capacity to recharge by reversing the current through the system. . Lithium-ion batteries became popular in the late 20th century, and have remained popular basically ever since, using various permutations of lithium combined with other metals and phosphates. However, throughout the history of modern batteries, the basic principles of the chemical reactions that generate power have not changed.
Okay, forget about the batteries. What on earth is ‘quantum’?
Let’s take a broad look at quantum physics. Particles in quantum states operate according to a completely different set of rules than everything we see around us, from water in clouds to blood vessels coursing through our veins. Particles enter a quantum state under extreme conditions, namely very low temperatures and vacuum. Under these conditions, particles can behave like several things at the same time, making them useful for performing tasks such as complex mathematical operations (Just like a quantum computer) and check whether time travel It is possible (in a sense).
Quantum systems can also be exhibited. entanglementIt is a phenomenon in which two or more quantum particles have defining properties of each other. In quantum computers, the atoms in the array carry the information needed for a given task, just like the bits in a regular computer. These atoms are quantum bits, or qubits.
But quantum computation is delicate. If any value of a quantum system becomes certain, its operation breaks down. This returns the entire system (e.g. the atoms in the array) back to its default state.
Quantum states can persist for long periods of time. Take the time crystal, see the state of matter first proposed in 2012 What physicists showed earlier this year Lasts at least 40 minutes, about 10 million times longer than any other known crystal. This crystal is a far cry from a quantum battery, but it shows how fleeting some quantum systems are in general. This is an important issue that must be addressed if we are to rely on such systems for power.
So how do the rules of quantum mechanics apply to batteries? Will this technology allow you to continue reading this article, even after you recharge?
Quantum batteries currently imagined
Just like regular batteries, quantum batteries store energy just as you can imagine. But that’s where the similarities end. Unlike the chemical reactions that charge and consume the energy stored in the battery, quantum batteries are driven by quantum entanglement, or an action that more closely couples the battery and source.
“Quantum batteries are made up of many quantum cells that act like one big quantum battery.” Jooyeon Kim, a quantum researcher at Seoul National University, said in an email to Gizmodo. “The question is how to maintain the quantum properties for a long time.”
Quantum batteries have the same properties as quantum computers, so major technological challenges must be addressed before this technology can become a reality outside of research environments. Physicists must figure out how to keep quantum systems delicate outside of the most carefully managed environments. Study setting. all room temperature superconductor It would be such a holy grail, but these days the only Those who claim such discoveries I had work to do Within a few months the truth came to light.
“Thermodynamics at equilibrium does not set a limit on how quickly energy is converted into heat and work,” a team of five scientists wrote at a recent conference on quantum batteries. Hosted On the preprint server arXiv. “It therefore seems natural to look for thermodynamic quantum advantages in quantum systems that are out of equilibrium.”
The researchers went on to note that quantum entanglement is related to how quickly energy can be stored in many-body quantum systems. This is a discovery that has sparked research into quantum systems as energy storage devices.
In 2018, a team modeled the Dicke quantum battery, the first proposed to exist in a solid-state architecture. in 2022The team tested the basic framework of the quantum battery in a laboratory setting using targets, mirrors and laser light.
Recent experiments delve into the problem.
Late last year, a team of quantum researchers proposed a system where quantum batteries could be charged in infinite causal order (ICO). Their findings were —published In ~ actual review letter—We assumed that a charging system using ICO could outperform existing charging protocols.
“Broadly speaking, ICO can be used to build quantum processes that are not possible in standard quantum theory, where the causal order must be clear or fixed,” said Yuanbo Chen, a researcher at the University of Tokyo and lead author of the study. , in an email to Gizmodo. “This flexibility enables a wider variety of quantum processes, some of which may exhibit advantageous and interesting properties.”
“We have seen significant gains in both the energy stored in the system and its thermal efficiency. And, somewhat counterintuitively, we discovered a surprising effect of the interaction that was the opposite of what we expected. “Low-power chargers can deliver higher energy with greater efficiency than relatively high-power chargers using the same device.” Chen said then.
The variety of experimental setups of proposed and realized quantum battery systems means that there are many possible pathways to revolutionize the design of these future technologies. Last month, a research team from the University of Gdańsk and the University of Calgary proposal A quantum cell charging system that maximizes the amount of energy stored in the battery and minimizes the amount of energy consumed (or lost) during the charging process. Part of the team’s redesign is that the quantum battery and charger are combined in the same reservoir, creating an interference-like pattern that improves the efficiency of energy transfer between the two. The research team estimated that the new charging process would allow the battery to store four times more energy than when using a conventional charger.
“Quantum batteries have molecules or atoms acting like waves acting together, whereas in conventional batteries, molecules or atoms behave like individual particles,” James Quach, a quantum researcher at the University of Adelaide in Australia, said in an email. Dear Gizmodo. “This collective behavior supports the ultra-wide-range charging properties of quantum batteries, which require less time to charge larger capacity quantum batteries.”
In 2022The team led by Quach tested the basic framework of a quantum battery by placing a molecular dye called Lumogen-F orange in a small cavity and applying pulsed light to it to see how the energy delivered by photons of light was stored. The team found that the system charges very quickly, and that larger systems generally need to charge faster.
“Currently, it takes femto to picoseconds to charge a quantum battery that stores about microjoules of energy for nano to milliseconds,” Quach said. “It may not seem long, but the storage time is actually a million times longer than the charging time. By comparison, this is equivalent to a conventional battery, which takes minutes to charge and can hold a charge for hundreds of years.”
like reported by new scientist, some physicists have theorized that the charging time of a quantum battery is inversely proportional to the number of qubits in the system. In other words, the larger the battery, the faster it will charge.
So…when will quantum batteries be available?
Quantum battery research is gaining attention, but it is still in its infancy. Their promise is incredible, but what the technology’s ultimate design will be remains an open question. Commercialization? It is now but a twinkle in the eye of the most entrepreneurial physicist.
The main problem is maintaining the quantum state as the quantum system expands. Quach believes that quantum batteries could be used as mobile energy sources for phones and cars, but many quantum systems currently require very cold, noise-free conditions to remain that way (as an aside, the setup for Quach’s 2022 experiment is It worked at room temperature). Dear reader, I don’t mean to demoralize you. nuclear fusion Perhaps closer to reality than the quantum batteries in our devices.
Many skeptical reporters don’t like to admit it, but I like to take my word for it. 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 can be integrated with new quantum technologies used for advanced simulations and measurements. A fully functioning quantum battery has not yet been demonstrated, but according to a recent colloquium, such technology could revolutionize the way we harvest, transfer and control energy. Given the obvious of humanity dependent on electricityEnergy storage could use quantum leaps.
more: Physicists have been able to power quantum computers using the Fibonacci sequence.
