Terahertz miim rectenna for energy harvesting applications

Abstract

Harvesting energy from electromagnetic radiation has been researched for over a century. Utilizing energy harvesting antenna to collect radiation from solar and terrestrial sources has shown promise to be a viable method of energy transfer. Generally, the energy density of electromagnetic radiation increases with frequency with the highest intensity in the optical frequencies. This work focuses on harvesting of terahertz radiation utilizing a rectifying antenna. The objective is to demonstrate zero-bias rectification of alternating current terahertz radiation captured by an antenna to useable direct current with a metal-insulator-insulator-metal diode. The direct current diode characteristics are presented with a two-term exponential fit to understand the rectifying capabilities of the rectenna. The power of the terahertz source is measured and estimated. Two material sets of diodes in the rectenna are measured under illumination from the terahertz source. The zero-bias rectification demonstrated is crucial to producing energy-harvesting devices. The rectification efficiency of the rectenna is 7.1 x 10[-10] and 1.7 x 10[-9] for the Ni-NiO-Nb[2]O[5]-CrAu and Ni-NiO-ZnO-CrAu devices, respectively.