Environmentally friendlier wireless energy power systems: The coil on a paper approach

Paper is ubiquitous in everyday life and a low-cost environmentally friendly material. Thus, the printing of advanced conductive/magnetic nanomaterials on paper will allow the scalable production of flexible smart electronics, including energy-storage devices, sensors, inductors or antennas, among others, contributing towards more sustainable electronics. Particularly, wireless charging technologies are becoming essential for internet-of-things (IoT)-related electronic devices due to the ever-decreasing dimensions of portable/mobile devices that limits the quantity of energy that can be stored. Here, screen-printed paper-based coils and inductors operating on the 1MHz - 20MHz range are presented based on Poly(vynil alcohol)/Fe3O4 and Ag inks. The ability of the printed cores and inductors to be incorporated on flexible wireless power transfer modules (WPTM) is technologically demonstrated by wireless powering light-emitting diodes (LEDs). The achieved induction efficiency of 94% is the highest reported on printed WPTM. The printed coils are also characterized by mechanical, hydrophobic and electrical properties that are suitable for IoT and industry 4.0 applications.
All authors thank the FCT- Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia the financial support in the context of the Strategic Funding UID/FIS/04650/2019 and under projects PTDC/EEI-SII/5582/2014, PTDC/BTM-MAT/28237/2017 and PTDC/EMD-EMD/28159/2017. Pedro Martins and Clarisse Ribeiro thank the FCT for the contracts under the Stimulus of Scientific Employment, Individual Support: CEECIND/03975/2017, and 2020.04163.CEECIND, respectively. Ricardo Brito-Pereira also acknowledges the FCT for the SFRH/BD/140698/2018 grant. Finally, the authors acknowledge funding by the Basque Government Industry and Education Department under the ELKARTEK, and PIBA (PIBA 2018-06) programs, respectively. Finally, funding from European Union’s Horizon 2020 Program for Research, ICT-02-2018 - Flexible and Wearable Electronics, Grant agreement no. 824339 – WEARPLEX is also acknowledged
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion