Inspenet, July 27, 2023.
Felipe Barra, researcher at the Millennium Nucleus Physics of Active Matter and professor at the University of Chile, has made a discovery with the potential to impact the development of quantum batteries that in the future could allow some processes to be carried out in a matter of seconds.
Microchips have revolutionized technology and electronics for decades by enabling the creation of smaller, more efficient devices. However, they are reaching their limit. To overcome this barrier, it is being considered to change the current technological architecture to one based on quantum mechanics , which could bring important changes in the size and speed of the devices.
To move in this direction, quantum batteries with subatomic systems capable of storing energy on a tiny scale and following their own rules, such as the superposition phenomenon, are required.
These have the ability to supply power faster than traditional ones, which makes them an option with great potential in areas such as computing and data processing .
The researcher Felipe Barra, who is part of the Active Matter Physics Millennium Nucleus and professor in the Physics Department of the University of Chile, has been researching for 5 years how to create more efficient quantum batteries . Their goal is to develop batteries that do not dissipate or lose energy and that can deliver it to the device optimally and quickly.
The principle of the most efficient quantum batteries
Doctor Barra, together with a team of researchers, has proposed an idea to extract energy from a system in thermodynamic equilibrium, which means that the system does not experience spontaneous changes of state, thus helping to protect and conserve the energy contained in it.
According to the laws of Thermodynamics, this would be impossible, since any manipulation of the system in equilibrium would require expending energy to return it to its original state.
However, the scientist found a way to “bend” this law by realizing that if the equilibrium system interacts strongly with its environment, it is possible to extract energy from it by disconnecting it from its environment. This opens up new possibilities to obtain energy more efficiently and could have innovative applications in the field of technology and electronics .
The result obtained showed that although disconnecting and reconnecting the atom to its environment requires a certain amount of energy, the energy extracted during this process is more sophisticated to obtain and allows the atom to be transformed into a quantum battery.
“In simple words, the energy needed to disconnect and connect our atom is cheap energy. But the energy that I extract from the system and store in the battery (atom) is more difficult to obtain and can be useful for a quantum device”, explains Doctor Barra.
All of these discoveries could have a significant impact on the future of quantum technologies, a field that is still in its early stages and has a long way to go before practical implementation.
However, these investigations are opening up promising avenues in the development of quantum batteries that could revolutionize the way energy is used. The researcher suggests that it is not unreasonable to consider the possibility of devices capable of processing huge amounts of information in a matter of seconds .
But, “there is also the option that quantum is not valid at all scales and forces us to think of new fundamental theories, which could be bad for electronics, but very entertaining for physics,” concludes the scientist.
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