CANBERRA, March 18 (Xinhua) -- Scientists in Australia have developed the world's first proof-of-concept quantum battery that could pave the way for long-distance charging of devices and super-fast charging of electric cars.

The prototype charges, stores and discharges energy leveraging unique properties of quantum mechanics such as superposition and entanglement, unlike chemical reactions in conventional batteries, said a statement from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), Australia's national science agency, on Wednesday.

The battery, engineered by scientists from CSIRO, Australia's Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, and the University of Melbourne, features a multi-layered organic microcavity charged wirelessly via laser, it said.

"Our findings confirm a fundamental quantum effect that's completely counterintuitive: quantum batteries charge faster as they get larger. Today's batteries don't function like that," said James Quach, quantum science and technologies science leader at CSIRO, who led the team that engineered the prototype.

The study, published in Light: Science & Applications, used advanced spectroscopy techniques to confirm the prototype's charging behavior, which showed it retained stored energy for six orders of magnitude longer than it took to charge. ■