Intel recently pulled the wraps off its mystical wireless charging device at the Intel Developers Forum in San Francisco. The gadget uses resonant magnetic fields to transmit power over a short distance. In their demonstration, the wireless power transmitter sent enough juice through the ether to power a 60-watt lightbulb a few feet away.

It works like this: The charger sends power through the air across two resonating electromagnetic coils. Electromagnetic waves are emitted from one coil and are received by another a few feet away. The magic frequency for this power transmission seems to be 10 MHz. The result is a steady flow of juice at the receiving coil, enough to, say, power a lightbulb.

The technology has been around since the days of Tesla, but it hasn’t been deemed efficient enough or stable enough for everyday use. Until recently, engineers working at MIT could only get about 45 percent efficiency out of the system, meaning that more than half of the electricity going into the first coil never made it across the gap to the second. Intel claims that its new charger operates at 75 percent efficiency, a huge leap over previous systems.

Intel researchers say that that there’s no chance of getting zapped by the wireless charger. Magnetic waves pass through human bodies without interference, they say. The company hopes to develop a wireless charging system for laptops in the future.

Link to New York Times article

All computer data boils down to ones and zeros. Until now, that is. A team of computer engineers at the University of Pennsylvania have figured out how to throw a “two” into the mix using copper nanowires, adding a third dimension to computing. They call the data triumvirates “trits,” and they could vastly increase the capacity of memory storage devices.

It works like this: Each nanowire is made up of two materials, a central core and a casing. Flashing a current through the wire causes either the core or the casing to phase change from crystalized (neat and orderly) to amorphous (jumbled and messy). The whole wire can either be crystalized or amorphous, representing a one or a zero, a traditional bit. Zapping the core crystalized and the casing amorphous or vice versa, adds the “two,” giving birth to the “trit.” 

Team member Ritesh Agarwal spoke to PhysOrg.com about the discovery:

“The use of nanowires to create electronic memory is advantageous for several reasons, but a non-binary form of nanowire memory like we have created could allow for a huge increase in the memory density of potential future devices.”

That means more memory in smaller packages and, eventually, digital wristwatches that are smarter than I am.

Link to PhysOrg.com article.

Researchers at the Zernike Institute of Advanced Materials at the University of Groningen have developed super-cheap plastic memory that will likely end up in next-gen RFID tags. It works like Flash memory, but it’s easier and cheaper to manufacture. How do they do it? Flash memory is like a club sandwich—layers of semiconductors between ferro-electric toast. The new memory mixes everything up into one blended semiconductor cake. Current can be channeled through the mixture, leaving programming in its wake. The researchers aren’t totally clear on how they’ve managed this feat, but they say it works wonderfully.

Link to ScienceDaily article.

Plastic typically insulates, protecting you from nervous-system-frying electrocution. But a team of Dutch researchers have discovered that if you mash two types of plastic together just right, they’ll conduct electricity as well as metal and exhibit properties that trump high-tech semiconductors.

Alberto Morpurgo and a team at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands squashed a micrometer of the organic polymer TTF to another micro-layer of a polymer called TCNQ. The two plastics stick together due to van der Waals forces—weak magnetic forces that act on molecules. Both polymers are insulators, but when they’re forced together electricity flows along the junction as well as it flows through metal.

Morpurgo believes that electrons are able to jump between spaces in the TCNQ molecules, allowing current to flow. It’s a new way to channel current and the researchers expect to discover many “interesting electronic properties” as they examine the material further.

The new polymer combo could replace semiconductors in circuitry. (Semiconductors are used to control the flow of electrons and are indispensable to modern electronics.) According to researchers, it’s much better at conducting electricity than current semiconductors.

Jochen Mannhart at the University of Augsburg in Germany told NewScientist:

“The electron concentration there is an order of magnitude higher,” he says. “That has the power to create new effects, from magnetism to superconductivity.”

Link to NewScientist article.