Is It Possible to Charge Your Phone by Radio?(1)

Smartphones bring great convenience to people's lives, but their battery life is a fly in the ointment. As soon as you forget to recharge, it will strike. Can it get a steady stream of the power supply?

In real life, energy is actually everywhere. These energies mainly include light, temperature difference, motion or vibration, and electromagnetic waves. At present, there are two main difficulties in harvesting energy from the surrounding environment: one is to find a way to convert and store energy for continuous use. For example, an energy such as solar energy is not readily available and needs to be converted and stored. The second is how to make the corresponding energy-collecting chips small so that they can be integrated into electronic equipment. Most of the environmental energy utilization technologies are deeply developed around these two aspects.

Harvest the energy in electromagnetic waves

At present, the energy-collecting chips on the market mainly include kinetic energy chips that convert kinetic energy into electrical energy based on motion or movement. According to research, the electricity generated by walking 10,000 steps, cycling for 1 hour, and running for 30 minutes can be used by smartphones, smart watches, and sports bracelets for more than 3 hours, 24 hours, and 72 hours, respectively. Photovoltaic chips use the photoelectric effect to directly convert solar energy into electrical energy. Solar power generation is called the most ideal energy source, but due to the large area of solar panels, it is difficult to integrate into electrical equipment, and due to the limitation of sunlight exposure, it cannot be used on cloudy days and nights, and its shortcomings are very obvious.

Magnetic energy chips collect energy from electromagnetic waves, including radio waves and light waves. The radio itself is energy, and it has a variety of applications, including wireless data networks, various mobile communications, and radio broadcasting. Energy can be harvested from radio waves using electromagnetic induction. Due to the widespread existence of radio waves, especially the relatively large intensity of radio waves around electronic equipment, energy harvesting from radio waves has a broad application prospect for low-energy electronic devices.