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Charging your phone in the blink of an eye is no longer science fiction.
For over a century, batteries have worked the same basic way of shuffling chemicals, storing the energy, and releasing it slowly. The process hasn’t changed much since Alessandro Volta stacked copper and zinc in 1800. But a team at CSIRO, the University of Melbourne, and RMIT University just published research that could age every battery on the market.
Their quantum battery, detailed in Light: Science & Applications, is the first device ever to complete a full charge, store, and discharge cycle using quantum mechanics.
What Is a Quantum Battery?
Forget ions and chemical reactions. While everyday batteries rely on chemical reactions, quantum batteries use properties of quantum mechanics.
This prototype is built around something called an Organic Microcavity, a precisely engineered stack of polymer films and mirrors. When a laser charges the device, the molecules inside absorb photons collectively in a single coordinated event that researchers call Super Absorption. “The system absorbs light in a single, giant super absorption event, and this charges the battery faster,” said Hutchison.
Here’s where it gets genuinely strange. Every battery you’ve ever used gets slower to charge as it gets bigger. When you add more cells, you have to wait longer, and that’s pure physics.
“Our findings confirm a fundamental quantum effect that’s completely counterintuitive: quantum batteries charge faster as they get larger. Today’s batteries don’t function like that,” said Dr. Quach.
The math behind it is precise: charging time decreases as 1/√N, where N is the number of molecules. The more molecules packed in, the faster it charges, exactly as theory predicted.
This isn’t a rounding error or a lab anomaly. The team confirmed it using dual femtosecond laser amplifiers and tunable optical parametric amplifiers at the University of Melbourne’s Ultrafast Laser Laboratory, recording ultrafast signals across orders of magnitude in time.
How Fast Are We Actually Talking?
The current prototype charges in a femtosecond (a quadrillionth of a second) and holds its charge for nanoseconds, roughly six orders of magnitude longer than it took to charge.
That ratio matters more than the raw numbers. In theory, a battery that charges in one minute using this same ratio could last for a couple of years.
This Didn’t Come From Nowhere
The research has been building for years. The team’s 2022 work already demonstrated that larger quantum batteries charge faster using an organic microcavity structure, but that device had no way to extract the stored energy. The 2026 prototype solves that problem by adding layers that convert stored energy into electrical current, moving the field from quantum curiosity to a functioning device.
Between those two milestones, in July 2025, RMIT and CSIRO extended the battery’s charge retention by 1,000 times — from nanoseconds to microseconds.
The Honest Part
This is not coming to your phone next year. The battery’s total capacity is a few billion electron-volts, and it holds its charge for nanoseconds.
Scaling quantum batteries to real-world sizes is expensive and technically hard. Quantum effects are sensitive to temperature, which could be a problem in extreme climates. Adaptating existing devices to use quantum batteries would require significant redesigns.
Dr. Quach is direct about what comes next: “The next step for quantum batteries right now is extending their energy storage time. If we can overcome that hurdle, we’d be that bit closer to commercially viable quantum batteries.”
Why It Still Matters Right Now
The near-term target isn’t your EV. One of the most compelling early applications is powering quantum computers themselves, which need precisely controlled energy at quantum scales — something quantum batteries may be ideally suited for.
The longer vision, in Dr. Quach’s own words: “My ultimate ambition is a future where we can charge electric cars much faster than fuel petrol cars, or charge devices over long distances wirelessly.”
Wireless charging over distance. No cable. No charging station. Just energy, transmitted through light, is not science fiction anymore. It’s a research roadmap.
