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

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.