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Scientists Create Super-Thin 'Sheet' That Could Charge Our Phones (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have created super-thin, bendy materials that absorb wireless internet and other electromagnetic waves in the air and turn them into electricity. The lead researcher, Tomas Palacios, said the breakthrough paved the way for energy-harvesting covers ranging from tablecloths to giant wrappers for buildings that extract energy from the environment to power sensors and other electronics. Details have been published in the journal Nature. Palacios and his colleagues connected a bendy antenna to a flexible semiconductor layer only three atoms thick. The antenna picks up wifi and other radio-frequency signals and turns them into an alternating current. This flows into the molybdenum disulphide semiconductor, where it is converted into a direct electrical current. [M]olybdenum disulphide film can be produced in sheets on industrial roll-to-roll machines, meaning they can be made large enough to capture useful amounts of energy.
Ambient wifi signals can fill an office with more than 100 microwatts of power that is ripe to be scavenged by energy-harvesting devices. The MIT system has an efficiency of between 30% and 40%, producing about 40 microwatts when exposed to signals bearing 150 microwatts of power in laboratory tests. "It doesn't sound like much compared with the 60 watts that a computer needs, but you can still do a lot with it," Palacios said. "You can design a wide range of sensors, for environmental monitoring or chemical and biological sensing, which operate at the single microwatt level. Or you could store the electricity in a battery to use later."
Ambient wifi signals can fill an office with more than 100 microwatts of power that is ripe to be scavenged by energy-harvesting devices. The MIT system has an efficiency of between 30% and 40%, producing about 40 microwatts when exposed to signals bearing 150 microwatts of power in laboratory tests. "It doesn't sound like much compared with the 60 watts that a computer needs, but you can still do a lot with it," Palacios said. "You can design a wide range of sensors, for environmental monitoring or chemical and biological sensing, which operate at the single microwatt level. Or you could store the electricity in a battery to use later."
Tesla did wireless power transmission at his Colorado Springs facility. It took a shyte ton of power to do it though. The distance between the transmission station an object being powered was less than a few city blocks.
The thing you are thinking about (and yes the scientist basically "discovered" a fancier version of tin foil) is the bug the Soviet Union put into a United States seal used in Russia at the end of WWII. It used no batteries nor external wired power source and could have ran forever had it not been discovered.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)
But if they wrap buildings in this stuff they will be effectively creating Faraday Shields that interfere with rf propagation. And they will also be creating massive capacitors if wrapped buildings are across from each other.
E Proelio Veritas.
No, you wrap it around your head, and run a wire to your phone. It blocks mind control rays and powers your phone at the same time
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"