Quantum batteries promise EV charging ‘as fast as pumping gas’

Despite vast improvements in battery technology, say the researchers, today consumers of electric vehicles still face the difficulty of slow battery charging speed. Currently, cars take about 10 hours to fully recharge at home, while even the fastest superchargers at charging stations require up to 20-40 minutes to fully recharge the vehicles.

To address this problem, the researchers looked for answers in the field of quantum physics. Their search has led to the discovery that quantum technologies may promise new mechanisms to charge batteries at a faster rate.

“量子电池”的概念是在2012年首次提出的，从理论上讲，量子资源（例如纠缠）可以通过以集体方式同时向电池中的所有电池充电，以大大加速电池充电过程。研究人员说，这尤其令人兴奋，因为现代大容量电池可以包含许多电池。

Such collective charging is not possible in classical batteries, where the cells are charged in parallel, independently of one another. The advantage of this collective versus parallel charging can be measured by the ratio called the “quantum charging advantage.”

后来，左右在2017年，注意到这种量子优势背后可能有两个可能的来源：即“全球操作”（在其中所有细胞同时与所有其他细胞交谈，即“全部坐在一张桌子上”）；和“全部耦合”，每个单元都可以与每个单元进行交谈，但一次只有一个单元格，即“许多讨论，但每个讨论都只有两个参与者”）。但是，目前尚不清楚这两个来源是否必要，以及是否可以实现充电速度有任何限制。

In their exploration of this concept, the researchers showed that all-to-all coupling is irrelevant in quantum batteries and that the presence of global operations is the only ingredient in the quantum advantage. In addition, the researchers say they pinpointed the exact source of this advantage while ruling out any other possibilities and even provided an explicit way of designing such batteries, and further were able to precisely quantify how much charging speed can be achieved in this scheme.

尽管最大充电速度随经典电池中的电池数量线性增加，但他们的研究表明，采用全球操作的量子电池可以在充电速度下实现二次扩展。研究人员说，为了说明这一点，考虑了一辆典型的电动汽车，其中包含大约200个电池的电池。使用这种量子充电将导致经典电池的速度增强200倍，这意味着在家充电时间将从10小时减少到大约三分钟。在高速充电站，充电时间将从30分钟减少到仅几秒钟。

后果,说这项研究ers, can be far-reaching and the implications of quantum charging can go well beyond electric cars and consumer electronics. For example, it may find key uses in future fusion power plants, which require large amounts of energy to be charged and discharged in an instant.

While quantum technologies are still in their infancy and there is a long way to go before these methods can be implemented in practice, it’s believed that research findings such as these create a promising direction and can incentivize the funding agencies and businesses to further invest in these technologies. If employed, say the researchers, quantum batteries could completely revolutionize the way we use energy and take us a step closer to our sustainable future.

For more, see “Quantum Charging Advantage Cannot Be Extensive Without Global Operations.”