2D material makes Wi-Fi energy harvesting more efficient

Enlarge / Wi-Fi connects the world together, but it's still quite complicated. (credit: Aurich Lawson)

Energy harvesting is all the rage at the moment. I'd like devices that convert waste energy into electricity. If I could, I would fill my house with all sorts of high-tech Rube Goldberg-esque machines for getting an extra few watts back. But Wi-Fi energy harvesting has never impressed me as a potential source of wattage, even though the latest research shows that it might well be getting somewhere.

Most houses and public spaces abound with Wi-Fi signals, but harvesting the energy in those signals is difficult. The first challenge is to collect the radiation.

Advanced bunny-ear dynamics

Collecting the radiation requires some near-impossible antennas. The antennas must be omni-directional, meaning they absorb radiation from all directions equally well. The antennas should also absorb all the radiation that hits them, which ain't an easy task either.

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