Interleaved Capacitive Coupler for Wireless Power Transfer

Capacitive power transfer is becoming an attractive alternate for wireless chargers. A coupler with large self- and mutual capacitance is desirable from the power and efficiency perspective. However, state-of-the-art couplers suffer from the tradeoff design issue between these two types of capacitance. In order to improve the required capacitance, an interleaved capacitive coupler is proposed and evaluated based on the Maxwell-based simulation. Using more plates, it can effectively use the coupling space to maintain the required self- and mutual capacitance, while minimize the cross coupling effects. Meanwhile, the new coupler is also helpful to reduce the radioactive electric field, and the high-radiation region is reduced dramatically. In the experiment, three types of couplers are built with the same coupling space, compensations, and output power. The proposed interleaved structure can achieve the highest efficiency and minimum radiation.