A Comprehensive Analysis of Metamaterial-Coupled WPT Systems for Low Electromagnetic Field Leakage

In this article, electromagnetic metamaterials with mu-near-zero (MNZ-MM) have been presented to explain the shielding effect in the wireless power transfer systems. First, the optimized design of the metamaterials unit cell has been carried on to achieve the near-zero permeability at the working frequency of 13.56 MHz. The equivalent circuit model of the MNZ-MM unit cell has been derived, which illustrates metamaterials with near-zero permeability have the great electromagnetic field (EMF) shielding effect. Additionally, the self- and mutual inductances associated with the resonance coils and MNZ-MM unit cells are deduced in detail. Moreover, the simplified human head model is established to investigate the magnetic field cancellation by MNZ-MM on the coil side. To evaluate the performance of the proposed MNZ-MM, the magnetic field strengths of the receiving terminal with different shielding materials have been compared in simulation. Finally, a series of experiments in real-environment are implemented to discuss the shielding effect of the MNZ-MM. The measurement results show the MNZ-MM has better performance in the swine brain sample than the ferrite and aluminum plate on the whole. With the proposed MNZ-MM, we demonstrate a maximum reduction of 17.52 dB in the leakage EMF and basically no effect on transfer efficiency.