AINEWS
Two mirrors about 100 nanometers apart trap dye molecules that absorb light collectively, so adding more molecules speeds charging rather than slowing it down as in a normal battery.
A bigger version of this prototype charges faster, not slower, because the molecules absorb light collectively. In March 2026, a CSIRO-led team pulled a measurable electric current from one for the first time, closing the full charge–discharge loop on a working device.
The device is an optical microcavity: two mirrors about 100 nanometers apart, with the space between them filled with organic dye molecules (a copper phthalocyanine, CuPc). When laser light hits the cavity, the molecules couple to the light field strongly enough to form hybrid light–matter states. That coupling produces a collective effect: the more molecules participate, the faster the cavity absorbs energy. Physicists call this superabsorption.
The first experimental observation of superabsorption came in 2022, but that earlier demonstration showed collective absorption without any usable current. The March 2026 result, [published in Nature's Light: Science & Applications](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41377-026-02240-6) and described in a CSIRO release, adds charge-transport layers so that absorbed energy can be extracted as an electric current, completing the cycle. The paper reports the first observation of steady-state superextensive electrical discharge power, meaning the device delivered more current per molecule as the system grew, not less. Conventional batteries lose efficiency as they scale up because resistance and other losses grow with size.
Charging happens on a femtosecond scale (a millionth of a billionth of a second). The absorbed energy persists on a nanosecond scale (a billionth of a second), roughly six orders of magnitude longer than the laser pulse that put it there, thanks to metastable triplet states in the dye. The whole device runs at room temperature, which is unusual for quantum hardware, where dilution refrigerators and vacuum chambers are more common. The reservoir itself holds only a tiny amount of energy, far too little to run a phone, a sensor, or anything else outside the lab.
CSIRO scientist James Quach, who led the work, framed the longer-term ambition more boldly: a future where electric vehicles could be charged faster than petrol cars are refuelled, or devices charged over distance wirelessly. The March paper does not test those claims, and the secondary coverage flags the device as a research result, not a roadmap. The technology is described as a proof-of-concept prototype that is still far from practical use.
Realistic downstream targets are narrower. The same collective mechanism could eventually feed power into quantum sensors and the control electronics of quantum computers, where the load is tiny and the value of any usable current is high. Whether the superabsorption scaling law survives at much larger molecular ensembles and at energy densities that matter outside a research lab is the open scientific question the next round of experiments has to answer.