Imagine a battery that charges faster the bigger you make it. With every battery you own, it works the other way around. In a lab in Australia, researchers have built one that breaks that rule.
At a glance
- Who: a team led by James Quach at CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency
- Milestone: a working prototype, plus the first electrical current drawn from it, in March 2026
- Charge time: femtoseconds (a millionth of a billionth of a second)
- Storage time: nanoseconds
- In your phone soon? No. Not even close.
How it works
Normal batteries store energy through chemical reactions. A quantum battery stores it using quantum effects instead. The CSIRO prototype is tiny: two mirrors about 100 nanometers apart, with a layer of dye molecules between them. A laser “charges” it.
Here’s the strange part. Because the molecules absorb energy together rather than one at a time, an effect called superabsorption, the battery charges faster as you add more molecules. “The rate at which you can absorb energy increases with the number of molecules there are,” Quach explained. And unlike other quantum battery designs that only work at temperatures colder than minus 150°C, this one works at room temperature.
The catch
It stores very little energy, only a few billion electron volts, which is a tiny amount, and it holds it for nanoseconds. To run anything you use every day, it would need to store vastly more energy for vastly longer.
Other scientists are cautious. Dario Ferraro of the University of Genova said quantum batteries are “unlikely to replace conventional batteries in everyday applications,” and that they’re “not about storing a great amount of energy.” Mauro Paternostro of Queen’s University Belfast pointed out that getting the energy back out in a usable form is still the field’s biggest unsolved problem.
So what’s it good for?
The most realistic near-term use is powering other quantum technology, like the sensors and components inside quantum computers. Quach says his team is working on a new hybrid design that stores energy longer, and he expects quantum batteries to power quantum devices within the next few years. Meanwhile, theorists keep proposing new designs. One published October 14 in Physical Review A describes a superconducting version tuned for more charging power.
The bottom line: this is real science and a genuine first, but think “early lab milestone,” not “phone that charges in a second.” Your current charger is safe for a long while.
Sources: Batteries News, Energy-Storage.News, Physical Review A.