Planckian, history of the first quantum battery (made in Italy)

This is a story that takes us to a future we haven’t even imagined yet: “in the land of qubits”. A place where the batteries charge almost instantly. And indeed, the bigger they are, the sooner they load.

They are quantum batteries that will take the place of the chemical ones, delivering the invention of the legendary battery Alexander Volta to a glorious past. This is also the story of a goliardic rivalry that has suddenly ceased to exist: the one between the researchers of two Pisan universities who have chosen to join forces – in this case the brains – to try to change the world. And it is a story that would not have been possible if Italy hadn’t finally struck a blow on the innovation front by creating the tools – and therefore the ecosystem – that made possible the birth of a startup that ten years ago would have remained in a drawer and instead today it is a company with two million and seven hundred thousand euros of investment just collected to create the prototype that can change everything.

This is the story of Planckian, a name that is a clear tribute to Max Planck, one of the fathers of quantum mechanics; but “Planckian” are also called some metals with properties that we still cannot explain. Here, let’s face it right away: don’t feel guilty if you don’t understand everything about this story. After all, a Nobel physicist like Richard Feynman he once said, “I think it’s safe to say that nobody really understands quantum mechanics.” We are forgiven.

But the strength of this story instead everyone understands. The beginning is March 2018 when in the most authoritative scientific journal of the sector, Physical Review Lettersthe results of a research on quantum batteries are published.

Among the authors there is Marco Polinireturned to Pisa, where he had studied, after engagements in the United States and England. A comeback brain, we would call it today. The fundamental idea, the intuition from which it all started, is this: “Alessandro Volta’s invention of the battery, which laid the foundations of the electric age, manages energy on the basis of electrochemical principles which of the limits. The first is exhaustion, due to the decay process of the chemical elements that compose it. Similarly, the charging process is, in absolute terms, “slow”, because it is linked to the time necessary for the electrochemical reactions to take place”.

With quantum physics, everything could change.

Polini starts working with it Victor Giovannetti, a colleague from the Scuola Normale Superiore, who also returned home after a period at MIT in Boston. In October 2018, the second scientific paper on energy transfer in quantum batteries arrives. For us laymen they explain it like this: “The quantum battery is a device made up of qubits. Qubits are physical particles in which it is possible to separate two states characterized by different energy levels. If the qubits are “arranged” in a specific architecture, it is possible to control their behavior. This dynamic process makes it possible to charge the battery in a time that decreases as the number of qubits increases.”

Leave aside for a moment the effort to imagine what qubits are: here we are talking about creating batteries that charge in an infinitely shorter time. A revolution, if successful.

The luck of Polini and Giovannetti is that in those months he began to operate Enea Tech, a foundation whose mission is to find disruptive technologies in laboratories capable of giving life to disruptive companies. We are in the world of deep tech, complex technologies that arise in the university environment; and of tech transfer, the process that leads them to become companies.

Enea Tech is led by its creator, Except Mizzi, one of the fathers of the homegrown startup ecosystem. One day one of the leading experts in quantum mechanics ends up on Mizzi’s radar, Simone Severinihead of the quantum computer project of Amazon in Seattle. “He told me: the most striking thing I’ve seen is in Pisa”. Mizzi gets excited and involves two important women: first Anna Amati, who leads Eureka!, a venture capital fund specializing in deep tech; and then Claudia PInguewhich recently joined CDP Ventures to create the Italian tech transfer network.

In the meantime, a government unexpectedly decides to get rid of Mizzi and reduce Enea Tech to very little, but the machine has now started. For the birth of Planckian, in 2021, only one ingredient is missing: a managing director, from Enea Tech arrives Michael Dallari, who also returned to Italy after an experience with the United Nations in Africa. And we come to today’s round, also signed by Exor Ventures as well as a small group of business angels who were the first to put in a few, fundamental money to get the startup here.

In Pisa it’s a big party.

Says Corrado Priami, delegate for the enhancement of research and the new entrepreneurial initiatives of the University of Pisa: “Planckian’s success is an extremely positive sign for the University which is investing more and more resources and skills to encourage the growth of quality spin-offs that have an important impact on the territory and on the country system”. It echoes him Luigi Ambrosiodirector of the Scuola Normale: “Planckian is a happy example of technology and knowledge transfer, born through a research path on quantum technologies that has seen the Scuola for several years always in the front row on the national and international scene, from the activities of the laboratory of NEST nanosciences up to the coordination of the National Quantum Science and Technology Institute set up with the PNRR”.

Massimo Gentilipartner of Eureka!, explains the extent of the challenge: “Planckian, by combining quantum mechanics with thermodynamics, will open up a new approach to the control of artificial atoms at the basis of various applications in the field of quantum technologies”.

At CDP Ventures, Claudia Pingue takes the opportunity to underline the goodness of the path taken so far: “The objective with which we launched Tech4Planetthe National Technology Transfer Pole entirely dedicated to financing the best ideas born in the laboratory in the field of environmental sustainability, is precisely to stimulate researchers, as in the case of Planckian, to transform their intuitions into successful startups”.

Simone Severini also celebrates from Seattle: “The creation of a startup that works in a scientific context even before a commercial context is a courageous and important innovation. And the fact that Planckian was founded through the interaction of two famous academic institutions such as the University of Pisa and the Scuola Normale Superiore indicates depth of vision and a desire to look to the future”.

While Salvo Mizzi, from whom it all started, looks to the future: “Planckian will certainly arrive at the first milestone, the battery prototype, in the two years foreseen. When they have done so, they will demonstrate that Volta’s pile, which works on the anode and cathode, can finally be archived. In its place, the batteries of the future could be called Planckian”.