Mobile By Russell Holly Jan. 21, 2014 2:56 pm
The thing that we call wireless charging today is a sad joke compared to what we want it to be. Fortunately, it looks like there’s a new technology coming that will deliver something much closer to what most people think when they hear about wireless charging.
In a perfect world, wireless charging would charge all of your devices within a specific and generous range of a broadcast point. The ability to set your laptop and smartphone down on your desk and have them both light up and notify you that they are now receiving power, for example.
The technology we call wireless charging right now is incredibly limited. It only charges a single object that is in contact with a charging plate, and that plate has a coil underneath to transmit the power over the incredibly short range. It’s inefficient, it’s expensive, and calling it wireless is more a technicality than something that is actually useful. There might be a new way to significantly extend the range, though, and researchers at Duke University and Toyota are calling it a superlens.
Unlike the single or multi-coil inductive chargers we see today that can only project energy an inch away, a superlens charger looks more like a large pad covered in a grid array of smaller boxes. This is accomplished through the use of metamaterials, which is to say it’s an incredibly small artificially constructed surface. By powering this metamaterial, Duke researchers have created a situation where a cone of electromagnetic power can be projected to nearly a foot away.
If this technology were to be applied to wireless charging of consumer technology, it would become possible for the entire table at your coffee shop to be a wireless charging spot for your gadgets. Alternatively, the charging cone created by a superlens could cover the most likely places you would place a phone in your car. This would make it possible for your phone to charge just be sitting in your cup holder. That is something Toyota would be especially likely to take interest in given GM’s decision to put wireless charging in several of their vehicles this year.
While this technology is far from being ready for consumer use, it’s not hard to see the many places this could be way more useful than what we have now.
More...
In a perfect world, wireless charging would charge all of your devices within a specific and generous range of a broadcast point. The ability to set your laptop and smartphone down on your desk and have them both light up and notify you that they are now receiving power, for example.
The technology we call wireless charging right now is incredibly limited. It only charges a single object that is in contact with a charging plate, and that plate has a coil underneath to transmit the power over the incredibly short range. It’s inefficient, it’s expensive, and calling it wireless is more a technicality than something that is actually useful. There might be a new way to significantly extend the range, though, and researchers at Duke University and Toyota are calling it a superlens.
Unlike the single or multi-coil inductive chargers we see today that can only project energy an inch away, a superlens charger looks more like a large pad covered in a grid array of smaller boxes. This is accomplished through the use of metamaterials, which is to say it’s an incredibly small artificially constructed surface. By powering this metamaterial, Duke researchers have created a situation where a cone of electromagnetic power can be projected to nearly a foot away.
If this technology were to be applied to wireless charging of consumer technology, it would become possible for the entire table at your coffee shop to be a wireless charging spot for your gadgets. Alternatively, the charging cone created by a superlens could cover the most likely places you would place a phone in your car. This would make it possible for your phone to charge just be sitting in your cup holder. That is something Toyota would be especially likely to take interest in given GM’s decision to put wireless charging in several of their vehicles this year.
While this technology is far from being ready for consumer use, it’s not hard to see the many places this could be way more useful than what we have now.
More...
