The Potential of 3D-MID Technology for Omnidirectional Inductive Wireless Power Transfer

Abstract

Omnidirectional inductive wireless charging system of a mobile is studied. Instead of using conventional planar coils printed on circuit boards, 3D Molded Interconnect Device (3D-MID) coils are used. The receiver is a single piece that has 3 elliptic inductors pointing in 3 different directions of the space. A half meter cubic box with 4 planar emitting inductors on 4 sides is used to transmit power at 6.78 MHz to the receiver inside the cube, regardless to the position and orientation of the receiver. Measurement results show that the 3D-MD receiver can get a power of 1.4 W at 7.9% efficiency on most of the positions inside the box. When the receiver is at the central position and also in the corners of the box, there is little variation of the transferred power when the receiver turns 360°, which means that it is almost insensitive to angular misalignment. However, when the receiver moves from the center towards the corners, there is a drop or an increase of power, which means that there is a lack of uniformity of the power which transferred near the corners. Ways to improve this point are discussed. However, our conclusion is that 3D-MID technology is an interesting technology for replacing the planar coils used in conventional WPT receivers.

Wirelessly-Powered Cage Designs for Supporting Long-Term Experiments on Small Freely Behaving Animals in a Large Experimental Arena

“…Figure 18. Examples of wirelessly-powered cage systems offering omnidirectional power transmission, presented in (a) [34], (b) [35], (c) [36], and (d) [22]. Figure 18.…”

“…In addition to the EnerCage-HC2 system, there are three other inductive link configurations that have been proposed to address omnidirectional wireless powering [22,35,36]. One possible coil configuration is a set of triple orthogonal Rx coils together with a single Tx coil.…”

“…With the parallel connection scheme, the highest Rx coil voltage is automatically delivered to the load. In Figure 18b, two pairs of Tx coils facing each other are attached to the vertical sides of the cage and driven by their own class-D PA simultaneously [35]. On the Rx side, three coils are placed at 90 • from each other, which can make the system insensitive to angular misalignments.…”

New Metal–Plastic Hybrid Additive Manufacturing for Precise Fabrication of Arbitrary Metal Patterns on External and Even Internal Surfaces of 3D Plastic Structures

“…The formation of specific metal patterns on three-dimensional (3D) plastic parts has attracted a great deal of research interest because of potential applications in 3D smart electronics, − telecommunication technology, − micro/nanosensors, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), and even quantum science . In contrast to traditional two-dimensional (2D) printed circuit boards (PCBs), − 3D metal–plastic composite functional devices have more complex, and sophisticated structures with higher degrees of design freedom and higher integration.…”

3D Plastronics for Smartly Integrated Magnetic Resonance Imaging Coils

“…3D conductive tracks are structured to interconnect electronic components, such as Surface Mount Devices (for example capacitors in this work), which are soldered on the surfaces. In some cases, such as in this work, the 3D conductive tracks can be directly used [antennas [15], inductances [16], eddy current sensor [17], etc.]. 3D Plastronics allows improved integration of heterogeneous functions (mechatronic, optical, thermal, fluidic, etc.)…”