Soljacic and a team of researchers at MIT’s physics lab predict a future in which no wires are needed to recharge technology gadgets, the educational institution said Tuesday.
 
Non-radiative energy transfer is based on the fact that wires are not needed to transfer electrical power between two devices.
 
“Electric motors and power transformers contain coils that transmit energy to each other by the phenomenon of electromagnetic induction,” MIT explained in a report. “A current running in an emitting coil induces another current in a receiving coil; the two coils are in close proximity, but they do not touch.”
 
Electromagnetic radiation, in the form of radio waves, is one way to transfer energy wirelessly, but it usually is not a very efficient process because the waves tend to spread in all directions and most of the energy is lost.
 
The breakthrough that Soljacic and his fellow researchers made was realizing that, if close-range induction takes place inside a transformer, the energy could be transferred over longer distances (such as the length of a room) in a way that’s much more efficient than standard electromagnetic radiation.
 
“Instead of irradiating the environment with electromagnetic waves, a power transmitter would fill the space around it with a ‘non-radiative’ electromagnetic field,” MIT said. A gadget equipped to resonate with the field would pick up the energy, and extra energy would be reabsorbed by the emitter.
 
In a statement, Soljacic said that non-radiative energy transfer is a novel application, and it wasn’t clear to the research team that the technique would work. Theoretical calculations and computer simulations helped overcome potential hurdles such as constraints of available materials.
 
Soljacic and his colleagues—Aristeidis Karalis and John Joannopoulos—envision a system capable of transferring energy roughly 10-15 feet from the power source, United Press International (UPI) said Tuesday.

“This would work in a room let's say, but you could adapt it to work in a factory,” UPI quoted Soljacic as saying in a BBC News report. “You could also scale it down to the microscopic or nanoscopic world.”
 
The new technique has obvious advantages for consumer electronics, but it also could be useful in industrial applications as well. No matter how it’s used, apparently the time to start dreaming of a world with no, or at least fewer, electrical wires is now.
 
Mae Kowalke previously wrote for Cleveland Magazine in Ohio and The Burlington Free Press in Vermont. To see more of her articles, please visit Mae Kowalke’s columnist page. Also check out her Wireless Mobility blog.


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