Recently, the American quantum company PsiQuantum and Mercedes-Benz (Mercedes-Benz) on quantum computing to improve battery technology, and published a new study on the fault-tolerant quantum computer to simulate electrolyte molecules in lithium-ion batteries (LiB) to achieve a new breakthrough in battery design.
The further popularization of electric vehicles is inseparable from battery technology that charges faster, lasts longer and is more efficient. But understanding and improving battery chemistry requires molecular simulation.
At present, the development of new lithium-ion batteries involves a large number of trial and error experiments. This slow and expensive R&D process can in principle be accelerated by simulating and validating the new chemical composition in it. However, it is difficult for traditional supercomputers to simulate the quantum behavior of these molecules and reactions, and quantum computers are expected to overcome this technical limitation.
Modern lithium-ion batteries move charge from one electrode to another through a liquid electrolyte material during a charge-discharge cycle. Improving the electrolyte will have an important impact on various types of battery performance, including energy density (i.e., battery efficiency), charging speed, battery life, cost, and safety. If an additive chemical is found that enhances the battery current provided by the electrolyte, lithium-ion batteries can be further improved and developed. To identify potential additives, the effects of their presence on electrolyte molecules need to be accurately simulated, but the calculations involved in such simulations cannot be done by conventional computers.
In response, PsiQuantum has partnered with Mercedes-Benz to develop a quantum algorithm for simulating the effects of fluoroethylene carbonate, a commonly used electrolyte additive. Published in Physical Review Research, the results systematically illustrate how fault-tolerant quantum computing can optimize battery designs.
Image from Physical Review Research
The team evaluated the physical resources needed to simulate the largest molecules in the aforementioned quantum computing,in terms of electron orbitals. They found that this would require a quantum computer with 16,382 logic qubits capable of executing circuits containing 232 billion T-gates, a type of universal qubit gate. This technical condition is clearly not possible at this time, so the team compiled the application into a specific hardware architecture, quantum computing based on photon fusion (FBQC). In this architecture, the basic hardware unit is the Resource State Generator (RSGs), a silicon photonic device that can generate a small set of entangled photons as needed. The team found that FBQC could simulate the effect of fluoroxycarbonate on battery performance in one day without further optimization.
They also demonstrated an interlacing method (Interleaving) specifically for optical quantum computing that combines an RSG and its associated fusion devices and a small number of fiber delay lines into an "interleaving module" through a modular FBQC architecture, published in arXiv.org.
RSGs are arranged on a 2D plane, with different areas responsible for different tasks, pictured from the Physical Review Research paper
The joint study marks advances in enabling efficient chemical simulations by quantum computers and reveals how fault-tolerant quantum computers can be better utilized to accelerate the development of a new generation of batteries.
"Better batteries are critical to our transition from fossil fuels to more sustainable modes of transportation and energy storage." Pete Shadbolt, chief scientific officer at PsiQuantum, said, "By carefully considering how future fault-tolerant quantum computers will operate, we have been able to optimize and enhance the way quantum computers improve battery molecular design. ”