Quantum batteries could rewrite the rules of charging

Scientists have developed what they describe as the world’s first working quantum battery prototype — a device that, unlike conventional batteries, can charge faster as it gets larger.

The breakthrough, announced in March 2026 by researchers at Australia’s national science agency CSIRO, could eventually provide a new way to power quantum technologies, although scientists remain divided over whether the technology could ever be practical for everyday devices, the BBC reports.

Conventional batteries rely on electrochemical reactions to store and release energy. Quantum batteries instead seek to exploit quantum effects to improve how energy is absorbed, delivered and controlled.

“Despite major technological improvements, modern batteries still rely on electrochemical processes first explored over two centuries ago,” says Dario Ferraro, associate professor of physics at the University of Genova, Italy.

A key concept behind the technology is quantum superabsorption. In CSIRO researcher James Quach’s design, two tiny mirrors are positioned about 100 nanometres apart, with organic dye molecules placed between them. When a laser is introduced, the light and molecules become strongly coupled, creating hybrid light-matter states.

Unlike conventional systems, where molecules absorb energy independently, quantum effects allow them to act collectively.

“So that the rate at which you can absorb energy increases with the number of molecules there are,” Quach says.

The result is a counterintuitive property: the larger the quantum battery becomes, the faster it can charge.

Quach’s prototype can charge in femtoseconds — quadrillionths of a second — while retaining the energy for nanoseconds. The team first demonstrated the effect in 2022 and, in March 2026, took another step by extracting an electrical current from the prototype.

“The key point is that quantum batteries are not about storing a great amount of energy, but about delivering it faster and with greater control,” says Ferraro.

The technology, however, remains at an experimental stage. The current prototype stores only a very small amount of energy for an extremely short period, far below what would be required to power conventional electronics.

Quach says he is working on a new hybrid design combining quantum components for rapid charging with conventional layers capable of storing energy for longer. He also plans to combine many microscopic quantum batteries to increase their overall capacity.

One potential advantage of his optical approach is that it operates at room temperature. Other quantum battery designs based on superconducting materials require cryogenic temperatures below -150C, making them difficult to use outside specialised environments.

“If the goal is proving the quantum charging advantage as real physics… the optical microcavity route is the strongest bet,” says Mauro Paternostro, a quantum physicist at Queen's University Belfast.

But Paternostro believes superconducting designs could ultimately prove more practical because extracting energy from them may be easier.

“A microcavity gives you a beautiful ensemble demonstration, but poor control over getting the energy back out in a useful, directed form.”

That challenge is central to the future of quantum batteries. Quantum states are highly sensitive to their surroundings, and interactions with the environment can cause the effects that enable rapid charging to deteriorate.

“Interactions with the environment can quickly degrade [quantum] effects, limiting both performance and scalability,” Ferraro says.

For now, researchers see quantum computing as the most likely early application. Quach believes quantum batteries could eventually help reduce the energy demands of quantum computers while potentially improving their speed and reliability.

The prospect of powering conventional devices is considerably less certain. Quach says the technology could one day potentially be used to charge electric vehicles while they are moving, using lasers to deliver energy.

Ferraro remains sceptical that quantum batteries will replace conventional batteries in everyday applications.

“In my view… quantum batteries are unlikely to replace conventional batteries in everyday applications such as mobile phones or electric vehicles,” he says. “Their natural domain is the quantum scale.”

For Paternostro, the central challenge remains finding a way to combine extremely rapid quantum charging with practical energy extraction.

“will have made the real breakthrough”.

By Aghakazim Guliyev