We could one day charge our phones and tablets wirelessly through the air, thanks to newly developed technology.
Researchers have used infrared laser light to transmit 400mW of light power over distances of up to 30 meters (98 feet). That’s enough juice to charge small sensors, though in time it could be developed to charge up larger devices such as smartphones too.
All this is done in a way which is perfectly safe – the laser falls back to a low power mode when not in use.
Circa 2012 face_with_colon_three
(PhysOrg.com) — Sometimes total electrical isolation is a good thing — and that’s the idea behind a power-over-fiber (PoF) communications cable being developed by engineers at Sandia National Laboratories.
It’s common to isolate communications between systems or devices by using fiber optic cables, said Steve Sanderson of Sandia’s mobility analysis and technical assessment division. But when power also is required, sending it down a copper wire can at times be a safety issue, and substituting it with battery power may not be suitable or practical, he said.
Sanderson, Titus Appel and Walter Wrye, a former Sandia intern, are co-inventors of a hybrid cable design that uses fiber to send and regulate optical power to the communications electronics integral to the cable. A patent is pending on the design.
We might be too close to wirelessly charging our mobile devices anywhere.
Researchers from Sejong University have developed a new system to transmit power over 30 meters using infrared light wirelessly. During laboratory tests, researchers demonstrated that the new system could transfer 400 mW of light power. For now, this amount of power is enough for charging sensors; however, further progress could mean enough high levels to charge mobile phones in various public places.
The research has been published in Optics Express.
In Optics Express, researchers describe a new wireless laser charging system that overcomes some of the challenges that have hindered previous attempts to develop safe and convenient on-the-go charging systems.
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Liquid crystals consist of rod-shaped molecules that slosh around like a fluid, and in those that are nematic the molecules are mostly parallel to each other. For devices like TV screens, the odd molecule that faces the wrong way has to be removed during the manufacturing process, but these defects are key for building a liquid crystal computer, says Kos.
In ordinary computers, information is stored as a series of bits, electronic versions of 1s and 0s. In Kos and Dunkel’s liquid crystal computer, the information would instead be translated into a series of defective orientations. A liquid crystal defect could encode a different value for every different degree of misalignment with other molecules.
Electric fields could then be used to manipulate the molecules to perform basic calculations, similar to how simple circuits called logic gates work in an ordinary computer. Calculations on the proposed computer would appear as ripples spreading through the liquid.
