Duke University Electrical Engineering Professor Steven A. Cummer and his students Alexander ("Alex") Katko (a Ph.D. candidate) and Allen Hawkes (an undergraduate) have published a new paper in the peer-reviewed journal Applied Physics Letters detailing a device that can harvest power from microwave signals.
Mr. Katko comments:
ItÂ’s possible to use this design for a lot of different frequencies and types of energy, including vibration and sound energy harvesting. Until now, a lot of work with metamaterials has been theoretical. We are showing that with a little work, these materials can be useful for consumer applications.
The properties of metamaterials allow for design flexibility not possible with ordinary devices like antennas. When traditional antennas are close to each other in space they talk to each other and interfere with each otherÂ’s operation. The design process used to create our metamaterial array takes these effects into account, allowing the cells to work together.