Key factors for wireless power transfer

Technology may one day be used to charge electric vehicles as they drive on highway, allowing unlimited range

2013-07-31

(Press-News.org) WASHINGTON D.C., July 31, 2013 -- What happens to a resonant wireless power transfer system in the presence of complex electromagnetic environments, such as metal plates? A team of researchers explored the influences at play in this type of situation, and they describe in the American Institute of Physics' journal AIP Advances how efficient wireless power transfer can indeed be achieved in the presence of metal plates.

The team discovered that resonance frequency matching, alignment of the magnetic field, and impedance matching are the most important factors for efficient wireless power transfer. These findings are highly significant, they say, because one futuristic application of wireless power transfer would be to harness and use it via magnetic resonance to charge electric vehicles.

Corresponding coils attached to the bottom of an electric vehicle would pick up energy as the vehicle passes over the coils embedded in the highway. With this type of dynamic charging, an electric vehicle's driving range could become unlimited and the size of its batteries would be greatly reduced.

Wireless power transfer technology may find use in a wide range of applications beyond powering electric vehicles, said Xiaofang Yu, an electrical engineer and postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University who led the research.

Other applications may include charging mobile devices, home appliances, or even medical devices implanted in the human body.

### The article "Wireless power transfer in the presence of metallic plates: Experimental Results" by Xiaofang Yu, Torbjorn Skauli, Bjorn Skauli, Sunil Sandhu, Peter B. Catrysse, and Shanhui Fan appears in the journal AIP Advances. See: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4809665

Authors of the article are affiliated with Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA; Norwegian Defence Research Establishment in Kjeller, Norway; and the German International School of Silicon Valley, Mountain View, Calif.

ABOUT THE JOURNAL AIP Advances is a fully open access, online-only, community-led journal. It covers all areas of applied physical science. With its advanced web 2.0 functionality, the journal puts relevant content and discussion tools in the hands of the community to shape the direction of the physical sciences. See: http://aipadvances.aip.org

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Binding together repelling atoms

2013-07-31

Basic chemistry tells us that a bond between atoms can form if it is energetically more favorable for the atoms to stick together than staying apart. This fundamentally requires an attractive force between the atoms. However, new theoretical predictions show that the combination of a repelling force and controlled noise from an environment can also have the surprising effect of leading to a bound state, although one with quite exotic properties. The research team consisting of Harvard postdoc Mikhail Lemeshko and former Harvard postdoc Hendrik Weimer* report their results ...

The pathway to potato poisons

2013-07-31

In 1924, Science magazine reported on a fatal case of potato poisoning: James B. Matheney of Vandalia, Illinois, had gathered about one and a half bushels of tubers, which had turned green due to sunlight exposure. Two days after eating the potatoes, most of his family -- wife, two daughters and four sons -- showed symptoms of poisoning; the only exceptions were James himself, who didn't eat the potatoes, and a breast-fed baby boy. His wife, aged 45, died a week later, followed by their 16-year-old daughter. The other five members of the family recovered. Although such ...

Gene decoding obeys road traffic rules

2013-07-31

One of life's most basic processes -- transcription of the genetic code -- resembles road traffic, including traffic jams, accidents and a police force that controls the flow of vehicles. This surprising finding, reported recently by Weizmann Institute researchers in Nature Communications, might facilitate the development of a new generation of drugs for a variety of disorders. Transcription indeed involves a step resembling the motion of a vehicle: Enzymes "ride" along gene "tracks," creating molecules that will later be translated into the various proteins involved ...

Guided growth of nanowires leads to self-integrated circuits

2013-07-31

Researchers working with tiny components in nanoelectronics face a challenge similar to that of parents of small children: teaching them to manage on their own. The nano-components are so small that arranging them with external tools is impossible. The only solution is to create conditions in which they can be "trusted" to assemble themselves. Much effort has gone into facilitating the self-assembly of semiconductors, the basic building blocks of electronics, but until recently, success has been limited. Scientists had developed methods for growing semiconductor nanowires ...

Personality and social psychology at the 2013 APA Convention

2013-07-31

From how secrets influence our emails to personality traits that increase the risk of obesity – a guide to some talks with new research in personality and social psychology at the APA Convention in Honolulu, July 31 – August 4, 2013 ... Linguistic Fingerprints of Secrets Keeping a secret not only burdens someone with the guilt of withholding information but also changes the way the person interacts with others, according to new research. In two studies, researchers looked at linguistic changes in the emails of people harboring secrets. They found that interactions with ...

Using gold and light to study molecules in water

2013-07-31

Thanks to a new device that is the size of a human hair, it is now possible to detect molecules in a liquid solution and observe their interactions. This is of major interest for the scientific community, as there is currently no reliable way of examining both the behavior and the chemical structure of molecules in a liquid in real time. Developed at Boston University by Hatice Altug and her student Ronen Adato, the process brings together infrared detection techniques and gold nanoparticles. It could potentially make a whole new class of measurements possible, which ...

Electrified sewage: New American Chemical Society video on electricity from wastewater

2013-07-31

Shocking as it may seem, wastewater flushed down toilets and sinks is getting a new life thanks to special fuel cells that use it to produce electricity, according to the latest video in the American Chemical Society's (ACS') Bytesize Science series. Produced by the world's largest scientific society, the video is at http://www.BytesizeScience.com. Bruce E. Logan, Ph.D., featured in the video, points out that sewage treatment traditionally has been a big consumer of electricity. With the new fuel cells, that situation could be reversed, with sewage becoming the raw material ...

New therapy improves life span in melanoma patients with brain metastases, SLU researchers find

2013-07-31

ST. LOUIS -- In a retrospective study, Saint Louis University researchers have found that patients with melanoma brain metastases can be treated with large doses of interleukin-2 (HD IL-2), a therapy that triggers the body's own immune system to destroy the cancer cells. The study that was recently published in Chemotherapy Research and Practice, reviews cases of eight patients who underwent this therapy at Saint Louis University. John Richart, M.D., associate professor of internal medicine at SLU and principal investigator of the study, first treated a patient with ...

Cross-country collaboration leads to new leukemia model

2013-07-31

Eight years ago, two former Stanford University postdoctoral fellows, one of them still in California and the other at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) in Cambridge, began exchanging theories about why patients with leukemia stop producing healthy blood cells. What was it, they asked, that caused bone marrow to stop producing normal blood-producing cells? And after almost a decade of bicoastal collaboration, Emmanuelle Passegué, now a professor in the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research at the University of California, San ...

Brain maps to benefit epileptic surgery

2013-07-31

A brain imaging research team led by Simon Fraser University neuroscientist Dr. Ryan D'Arcy has found a new way to help surgeons more accurately plan for surgical treatment in epilepsy. The results of a recent study using magnetoencephalography (MEG) have been published in the field's highest impact journal, Human Brain Mapping. To showcase the study, the journal highlighted the novel images of MEG activity on the August 2013 cover. D'Arcy and his team used MEG technology to produce detailed spatial maps of critical language functions in order to better enable pre-operative ...

Violence against women and children among top health threats: New global study reveals disease burden far larger than previously estimated

University of Maryland School of Medicine names distinguished scientist and academic leader Gerald M. Wilson, PhD, as Chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Key factors for wireless power transfer

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: