Design, Optimization and Fabrication of a 28.3 THz Nano-Rectenna for Infrared Detection and Rectification

Abstract

The increasing energy demands of the world's population and the quickly diminishing fossil fuel reserves together suggest the urgent need to secure long-lasting alternative and renewable energy resources. Here, we present a THz antenna integrated with a rectifier (rectenna) for harvesting infrared energy. We demonstrate a resonant bowtie antenna that has been optimized to produce highly enhanced localized fields at the bow tip. To benefit from this enhancement, the rectifier is realized between the overlapped antenna's arms using a 0.7 nm copper oxide. The thin film diode offers low zero bias resistance of 500 Ω, thus improving the impedance matching with the antenna. In addition, the rectenna prototype demonstrates high zero bias responsivity (4 A/W), which is critical in producing DC current directly from THz signals without the application of an external electric source, particularly for energy harvesting applications.

Harvesting the loss: surface plasmon-based hot electron photodetection

“…An alternative approach to extracting hot electrons is to form a metal-insulator-metal diode [47,83,84,[103][104][105][106][107]. MIM diodes have been used as "rectennas" [108] at infrared and lower frequencies for power conversion and transmission. At optical frequencies, the operation of MIM diodes as rectification antennas has proven to be difficult [109], with efficiencies remaining low [110] due to the limitation on the RC time constant of the MIM diodes.…”

Dual-Polarized Multi-Band Infrared Energy Harvesting Using H-Shaped Metasurface Absorber

“…Therefore, by varying the resonator dimensions along with the periodicity of the cell one can tune the resonator to the desired load resistance. This can be critical when a low input impedance MIM diode is connected across the gap of the resonator such as the diode presented in [18]. It is critical to note here that unlike metamaterial absorbers, the proposed metamaterial harvester not only absorb the energy within the medium, but also utilize a load resistor to channel the absorbed energy to a load.…”

“…The fact that optical rectennas can capture solar energy during the day and night with wideband reception and higher theoretical conversion efficiency make them advantageous over photovoltaic technology. A number of articles demonstrated full rectenna systems operating at optical frequencies [17,18]. However, the reported efficiencies were less than 1% due to the large mismatch between the MIM diode and the antenna.…”

“…However, the reported efficiencies were less than 1% due to the large mismatch between the MIM diode and the antenna. In a recent article, a novel rectenna design involving an MIM diode with a small contact area and a very thin oxide layer is used to offer low zero bias resistance that can be easily matched to the antenna and hence increase the overall rectenna system conversion efficiency [18].…”

Terahertz harvesting with shape-optimized InAlAs/InGaAs self-switching nanodiodes

“…In the low-voltage regime, the channels behave as square-law rectifiers that generate DC electrical power. The magnitude of the DC out-put is given by: [25][26][27] …”