BEDFORD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Fractal Antenna Systems, Inc. today disclosed the impending issuance of US patent 9,482,474, entitled “Radiative Transfer and Power Control with Fractal Metamaterial and Plasmonics”. The patent divulges a fundamental new approach to power gathering and transport, as well as heat transfer, with the innovation of metamaterials based on fractal geometry.
Fractal metamaterials are collections of detached resonators, themselves intricate structures made from repeated and scaled designs. Each fractal resonator lies close to another, collecting and transferring its energy along with adjacent ones, without actual physical connection. The process happens at the speed of light and is a man-made form of ‘radiative transfer’. Fractals afford highly efficient and tighter packing that uniquely achieves the effect, with multiple band and broadband performance.
The new patent broadly claims fractal metamaterials and details uses for power and heating/cooling.
Fractal metamaterial may be used to collect, move, and control energy, for example, and can be physically flexible. Moreover fractal metamaterial can be widely tuned to best work at a desired spectrum, and the resonators can be arranged to magnify, via collection, the power gain, with no physical connections. It provides collection and control benefits without wires or lenses, for example.
Much has been reported in recent years about the across-the-board value of fractal metamaterials, especially from China, where research is booming. “We’ve known this for a while; an example was prominently featured in the magazine Nature,” notes inventor and the firm’s CEO Nathan Cohen, “apparently others did not search and cite the patent application database. Still, we are happy with independent research confirmations, since this adds credibility as we watch a new applied science field unwittingly grow in the shadow of our firm’s long established invention. Now there is incontrovertible recognition of the source-invention itself with the issuance of patent ‘474.” Cohen adds that several of the firm’s products, and patented invisibility cloak and deflector shield inventions, incorporate fractal metamaterial.
Cohen is no novice to innovation. A Ph.D. astrophysicist and retired university professor, Cohen holds dozens of imaging and related patents and is the inventor of fractal antennas, the invisibility cloak, and deflector shield, among others. His broad background has provided unique insight into energy and related processes, leveraging into practical applications.
Fractal metamaterials are ideal for energy harvesting and wireless charging and are likely to be a key enabler in the next generation of solar energy collection. In addition, the patent discloses the ability of fractal metamaterials to dissipate surplus energy away from a hotspot. This allows new forms of lightweight heat sinks, shielding, heat pumps, and refrigerators, with many commercial and defense uses. Cohen believes a new era of power collection and transport, cooling, and heating technologies will emerge in the next few years from the invention, in addition to imaging related and other uses.
ABOUT FRACTAL ANTENNA SYSTEMS, INC.
Fractal Antenna Systems, Inc. (www.fractenna.com) supplies products for the world's most demanding wireless, and electromagnetic applications. Backed by over four dozen U.S., and international patents, plus dozens of patents pending, Fractal Antenna Systems is the recognized pioneer in fractal technology, with extensive research and field experience over 21 years in business. The company is a privately held and headquartered in Bedford, Massachusetts, USA.
