Converting Wi-Fi signals to electricity with new 2-D materials
news.mit.edu
news.mit.edu
This seems like it would be a potentially nice to have first layer in a secured room/building. Recoup some energy then actually go about blocking unwanted signal leakage.
From a wild speculation side: if a tour bus of the elderly with pacemakers powered by this goes by are they just a traveling dead zone?
It cant suck the WiFi out of a large area like some kind of vacuum cleaner, Electromagnetic waves don't work like that.
If you are interested in the challenges of harvesting energy from Wi-Fi and some ways to address those challenges, here's a nice paper (originally in CoNEXT 2015) from a team I was fortunate to be on: https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2017/3/213830-powering-the-ne...
[Edit: the relevance here is that, even with an awesome antenna like the one in the news, the Wi-Fi protocol kinda works against you, which raises a bunch of interesting questions.]
The entire rest of the article is just pointless misleading fluff.
No, it's not. It's a press release, which while being pretty technically basic is broadly accurate. It includes some comparisons with existing technology, reasons that this development is different, and possible applications. The point is to make this development known to other people outside the field who have less knowledge about the underlying technology. That's a totally reasonable goal; not every article has to be an in-depth technical review.
This article does commit one unforgivable crime, which is failing to link to the research itself. I absolutely cannot understand why media outlets and press offices are so reticent to do this simple thing.
The second paragraph is sort of true. They are using their novel diode in an otherwise standard antenna structure.
Third paragraph repeats the second. Mentions that it can be manufactured in sheets?
Fourth paragraph sort of repeats the previous but this time as a quote from someone. The Quote, " have come up with a new way to power the electronics systems of the future — by harvesting Wi-Fi energy in a way that’s easily integrated in large areas — to bring intelligence to every object around us." It's pure marketing speak. We need more funding, let's throw ai onto this for some reason.
The next 3 paragrpahs are repeats of, This device that provides power can be used to provide power to things. It at least mentions a broad figure of merit, 40 uWatts when exposed to 150 uWatts.
We are now half way through the article when the next paragraph finally mentions rectifiers, giving a brief but not great definition of what they are and their current state of the art. It mentions some problems with modern rectifiers, which are not actually true.
The next paragraph is actually only a single sentence and contains the entirety of the new development that the whole article is supposed to be about!
The next paragraph tries to explain the shortcomings of current Schottky diodes with bad physics.
Another quote about the device but lacking in broader context.
The second to last paragraph gives a better version of the efficiency figure of merit from earlier. Lacks details.
Last paragraph is a list of funders who are paying for the research.
That is a pretty crappy fluff to meat ratio in my book.
Can we have this as a service? Fluff-to-meat-ratio feature is a requirement though.
It also states. "Promising early applications for the proposed rectenna include powering flexible and wearable electronics, medical devices, and sensors for the “internet of things.” Flexible smartphones, for instance, are a hot new market for major tech firms."
If this ends up being practical, this is really, really, cool - and that's an understatement.
This is apparently a portmanteau of "rectifying" and "antenna".