Energy

Graphene device could harvest Wi-Fi signals for wireless charging

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An MIT team has designed a way to potentially harvest energy from ambient radiation to charge small electronic devices (probably not your phone, though)
José-Luis Olivares, MIT
An MIT team has designed a way to potentially harvest energy from ambient radiation to charge small electronic devices (probably not your phone, though)
José-Luis Olivares, MIT
A schematic showing how the terahertz rectifier would work. The red lines are terahertz waves, the blue triangles are the antenna, and the green square is graphene
Courtesy of the researchers

In its current form, wireless charging technology isn’t much more useful than plugging in your phone – after all, the device still has to be in contact with the charger. But there’s plenty of ambient radiation just floating around in the air, and now researchers from MIT have laid out the blueprints of a system that could tap into this wasted energy source to charge devices.

Terahertz radiation is made up of high-frequency waves that sit between infrared and microwaves on the electromagnetic spectrum. They’re produced by many electronic devices, including basically anything that sends out a Wi-Fi signal.

While this may seem like an untapped gold mine for energy harvesting, it’s been notoriously difficult for scientists to harness. The MIT team’s new method seems like an intriguing possibility – but at this stage it’s just a blueprint, and hasn’t been tested.

“We are surrounded by electromagnetic waves in the terahertz range,” says Hiroki Isobe, lead author of the study. “If we can convert that energy into an energy source we can use for daily life, that would help to address the energy challenges we are facing right now.”

The team’s device is known as a terahertz rectifier and it’s made up of a small square of graphene with a layer of boron nitride underneath, flanked on both sides by an antenna. This antenna collects the terahertz radiation from the ambient air, boosting the signal while passing it onto the graphene. That, in turn, causes the electrons in the graphene to all flow in the same direction, creating a direct current (DC).

A schematic showing how the terahertz rectifier would work. The red lines are terahertz waves, the blue triangles are the antenna, and the green square is graphene
Courtesy of the researchers

The team says that the graphene needs to be as pure as possible, since any impurities would send the electrons scattering. The boron nitride layer is also there to prevent this from happening. Normally, the electrons in graphene would be forced equally in all directions, but the boron and nitrogen atoms in the lower layer redirect their path just enough to keep them all moving together.

While it’s likely that any terahertz rectifier would only generate a small amount of electricity, it could be enough to power small devices at first. The team suggests that the first use cases might be for powering implanted devices such as pacemakers, which currently require surgery to change the batteries.

But of course, the end goal of this kind of technology would be passively topping up our phones and laptops while using them. Researchers have been experimenting for years with finding ways to harvest signals like radio waves, but the universal problems include small outputs, long charge times or needing specially-built rooms. It looks like we’ll be plugging in our phones for many years to come.

Nevertheless, the MIT project is the latest baby step towards useful wireless charging technology. The team now plans to begin building and testing the physical device.

The research was published in the journal Science Advances.

Source: MIT

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4 comments
ChairmanLMAO
I invented a device that you mount on a pole above the grave of Nikola Tesla. It picks up the waves from him turning in his grave. It can charge a cellphone in 4 hours. With this new technology announcement I should be able to get enough to power a small motorcycle or even a Tesla Model S in less than 24 hours.
mikewax
if only Tesla were alive today, what a different world it would be.
czechster
Einstein was once asked how it felt to be the smartest man alive. Einstein’s reply was "I don't know, you'll have to ask Nikola Tesla.

It was basically a joke that has been missed by a surprisingly high number of people, however with respect to this article it adds a little twist.
Worzel
Back in the 1950's it was reported that there was a man who lived close the a BBC ''Light Program'' longwave transmitter. He erected a screen of chickenwire, in his attic, and converted the energy it collected to run his house lights on. However, the BBC detected a massive 'hole' or blank spot in their radio reception area, and eventually tracked the source of the problem. I've worked on military transmitter sites, and I know the energy that can be collected by nearby aerials which were not in use.(Ouch!) It should also be possible to use the planets own magnetic field for energy collection, but it's very long wave, which would probably rule out portable devices. I also worked on top of the Rock, of Gibraltar, in a transmitter site, and the static electricity that could build up during an electric storm, was sufficient to light all the fluorescent lamps in the building. The cloud-base of the storm was about 2-3 hundred feet, and the Rock is 1400 feet, so our building was in the middle of the storm. I also experienced a lightning bolt about 6 feet from me, outside the building. That was as close as I wanted to get. I subsequently stayed well away from the walls during storms! I think Tesla understood electricity, like no man, before or since. He could probably 'see' electricity and how it behaved, in his mind. Maybe, with the ''Electric Universe'' theories, that are just budding at present, his understanding will be rediscovered.