Quantum computing. Fusion power. Electric motor vehicles. Solid-state batteries. If you’re interested in innovation – who isn’t? – there’s surely never been a more exciting time than now to be alive.
There’s more I could mention – electric ships, for instance, a field in which Robert Clifford’s Hobart company Incat now leads the world – among a host of other things that science fiction writers used to dream about. Of course technology alone won’t enable our species to remain viable on an environmentally-challenged planet, but that’s another question for another time.
To begin with quantum computing: For years, teams of physicists in several countries have been applying principles of quantum physics to technologies operating at a subatomic level that promise computing power exponentially greater than that of today’s digital computers while using dramatically less electrical energy.
In this rarefied atmosphere a University of NSW team led by Professor Michelle Simmons, helped by over 20 years of Australian Research Council funding, has put Australia among the leaders in the race to make quantum computing commercially viable, which may be as early as 2030.
We are close to getting controllable, low-waste fusion energy operating on Earth, the kind we see in the sky every sunny day in an uncontrolled form. But it’s still tantantisingly out of reach. One unresolved challenge is how to vary fusion power output, to enable it to serve a variable renewable grid.
And so to batteries, the challenge of the moment, where success would make buying an electric vehicle a total no-brainer.
Technical brainpower all over the planet has been exercised for years on increasing the power-to-weight ratio of batteries for all kinds of transport. Solid-state batteries, besides being lighter than conventional liquid-state lithium-ion batteries, promise to cost less and last longer while offering an SUV travel range above 1000 km, five-minute charging and no fire risk.
Inevitably, this tempting prospect has led to all manner of trickery and sleight of hand. Marketeers have been caught out making fraudulent claims for liquid-state batteries disguised as solid-state. So far, no genuine solid-state battery has arrived on the market.
But early this month, Just Have a Think science podcaster Dave Borlace reported new research from America’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory indicating a potential breakthrough. This involves “zwitterions”, molecules that can hold both positive and negative electrical charges simultaneously while remaining electrically neutral.
Borlace is at pains to point out that this is still early-stage research. An electric vehicle powered by zwitterion electrolytes isn’t about to appear on the market and researchers are still working on a host of fundamental materials-science problems. Timelines keep slipping for delivery of solid-state batteries that work reliably, repeatedly and affordably.
Like quantum computers, solid state batteries demand microscopic-scale manufacturing tolerances. There’s a big difference between what happens in the laboratory, where one-off battery prototypes operate in highly-controlled conditions, and what happens in the real world involving large numbers of products.
But Borlace believes that “something genuinely important has changed over the last few years, because the industry is slowly moving from theoretical prototypes into pilot-scale manufacturing,” with semi-solid-state batteries already on the market.
Chinese battery-maker CATL has just showcased what it calls a “condensed matter” battery offering power equivalent to a lithium-ion phosphate battery at a little more than two-thirds the weight – a chemistry already employed in military drones and vertical take-off aircraft. And BYD has announced a solid-state battery at “critical breakthrough stage”.
The Taiwanese battery maker Prologium, partnering Mercedes-Benz and other big industrial players, has demonstrated very fast-charging energy-dense batteries and is now building a giant factory in Dunkirk, France, aimed at supplying Europe’s EV market.
Similarly, Volkswagen is backing QuantumScape’s anodeless solid state technology – still very much in development stage – while Ford and BMW have put their weight behind Solid Power’s solid sulphide electrolyte battery with very promising statistics. The company is currently transitioning from laboratory-scale to pilot-scale development.
Finally, a reminder that innovative technology cuts all ways. The Middle East war revealed that Iran’s military, using Chinese satellite technology, could target individual aircraft at US bases. Now the Novy Baf science substack reports that using AI, Chinese geostationary satellites 35,000 km above Earth can pinpoint a moving ship or aircraft accurately enough for targeted missiles.
There’s nothing like a war to get things moving. Ukraine and Iran have each shown that cutting-edge technology isn’t the exclusive province of superpowers, which in turn must be feeling suddenly vulnerable.
For all its troubles, life’s never dull.