While the copper coils embedded in repeaters today are made of wire, Schatz said they the coils can also be printed on a flat sheet like any printable circuit. WiTricity has already produced printed coils and demonstrated them in smartphones without adding any thickness to the device. The printed coils can also be used in household products as common as shelf paper in a cabinet.

My comments:

Open a drawer and usually you’ll find the bottom of the drawer cushioned by a piece of paper of one kind or another. That paper is the shelf paper. And its purpose there is not as cushion (though it serves that purpose as well), but just as something that’ll keep the drawer clean.

Same with all other cabinets in the house. You can buy shelf paper in the supermarket, or you can make your own. And its purpose is for keeping your drawers, cabinets and shelves clean. If you spill something in the drawer, for instance, you simply remove the shelf paper and replace it with another.

Hence, shelf paper is everywhere and commonplace. Therefore, if the printed coils “can be… as common as shelf paper in a cabinet”, they’ll be very widespread in use indeed.

Popular, in other words.

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本文僅代表作者本人觀點，與本網立場無關。歡迎大家討論學術問題，尊重他人，禁止人身攻擊和發布一切違反國家現行法律法規的內容。

About the author:

Zhang Xin（張欣） has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.