Wireless power resonator

In recent years, research works on coreless PCB winding structures appear in medium-voltage and high-voltage gate drives, isolation transformers for multi-Mega-Hertz power supplies and domino resonators for WPT applications. The PCB winding structures are particularly important for domino WPT systems in the high-voltage (HV) insulation rod applications in HV transmission towers. Power companies have confirmed that manual windings and discrete capacitors are not suitable for such HV applications because of the HV discharge between metallic terminals in discrete capacitors. PCB resonator structures have distributed inductance and capacitance and can therefore avoid internal HV discharge. I proposed a new printed-circuit-board (PCB) resonator structure suitable for mega-Hertz wireless power transfer (WPT) applications. Unlike previous PCB resonators that can form only parallel resonant structures, the new designs can easily be configurated as either parallel or series resonators. The novelty of the resonator structure involves the replacement of the PCB material with an airgap in the main magnetic flux path of the resonator structure and adoption of air-trenches between adjacent turns, therefore greatly reducing the inter- and intra-capacitance of the two printed windings and its associated PCB dielectric power loss. The natural resonant frequency can easily be tuned for mega-Hertz operation.