Russia unveils AA battery with wireless Qi charging

ITMO University has presented an AA-format rechargeable battery that supports Qi wireless charging directly inside a device. From the outside, it looks almost identical to a standard 1.5 V AA cell, but it is designed to recharge without being removed from the battery compartment.

Inside the casing are a lithium-ion battery, a receiver coil, a current rectifier, and two voltage converters. The body itself was 3D-printed from transparent photopolymer resin so the magnetic field could reach the coil with minimal interference.

The geometry was the hard part. A conventional flat coil would not fit inside a standard cylindrical AA body, so ITMO’s engineers bent the coil along the inner wall of the casing. That preserved the AA size while allowing Qi charging to work using the same standard already used in smartphones, earbuds, and watches.

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AA is one of the most widely used battery formats on the market, found in remote controls, toys, flashlights, and sensors worldwide. Traditional rechargeable AA cells usually require a separate charger, while USB-C rechargeables from some manufacturers still have to be removed from the device.

If the design reaches mass production, it could be useful in hardware where batteries are replaced often or the compartment is hard to access. As the source notes, the key questions now are longevity and price — the factors that will determine how it compares with conventional AA rechargeables.