Critical Review of Recent Advancement in Metamaterial Design for Wireless Power Transfer

Abstract

With increasing penetration of wireless charging technologies comes an ever-rising demand for wireless power transfer (WPT) structures that demonstrate high power transfer and power transfer efficiency (PTE), especially over wide transfer distance. The concern with reliability in adopting wireless charging technologies in consumer and industrial applications (including mobile chargers and dynamic wireless charging of electric vehicles, EVs) stems from fluctuating output power and low power transfer efficiency (PTE). Moreover, the inherently high resonant frequency of existing metamaterial (MM)-based WPT designs imposes a high switching stress on power semiconductors and passive components, resulting in high power dissipation, especially in high power applications. This manuscript presents a critical survey of recent studies and developments in MM-based WPT systems. First, the fundamental concepts and classification of WPT technologies based on magnetic resonant coupling (MRC), inductive coupling etc. are discussed. Going forward, key MM design considerations, including resonance operating frequencies, effective permittivity ( <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\epsilon _{r}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> ), effective permeability ( <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu _{r}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> ), numerical modeling, equivalent circuit representations, and 3D fabrication technologies are widely analyzed and critiqued. Additionally, the performance enhancing effect of integrating different MM designs with existing WPT systems are explicitly discussed. Finally, the technical challenges associated with the resonant operating frequencies of MM, miniaturization of MM design footprint, and 3D prototyping are investigated while also presenting potential solutions.