The modern battery has come a long way in its 224-year history. In the place of Alessandro Volta’s piles of metal disks and brine-soaked cloth, we now have batteries the dimensions of a graham cracker that can last days before needing a recharge.

But what is the ceiling of the devices currently on the market? What sort of technical challenges must be overcome to break that ceiling, and when will such hurdles be cleared? What is the future of energy storage?

A handful of scientists around the world are working on an answer: a battery technology that uses the laws of quantum physics, rather than classical physics, to hold a charge. It’s a long, long way out, but Rome wasn’t built in a day—and it certainly wasn’t powered in one.

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