Rectifying Antennas for Energy

Harvesting
Shawn Divitt
1 June 2012
The Energy Center (TEC), KNUST
Outline
Energy fundamentals
Antennas
Optical rectification
Earths Main Energy Source
Thermal radiation
The electromagnetic spectrum
The absorption spectrum of the earths
atmosphere
radio
Nikola Tesla, inventor of the AC
electric generator, was also partly
responsible for the radio
transmitter.
microwaves
All mobile phones send and
receive microwave radiation.
visible (optical)
Visible light has a
wavelength around
500nm. Light from the
sun contains all the
colors of the rainbow.
Rectifying antenna (rectenna) elements
S. Grover and G. Moddel, Applicability of metal/insulator/metal (mim) diodes to solar
rectennas," Photovoltaics, IEEE Journal of, vol. 1, pp. 78 {83, july 2011.
Rectenna arrays
W. Brown, The technology and application of free-space power transmission by microwave
beam," Proceedings of the IEEE, vol. 62, pp. 11 { 25, jan. 1974.
Browns helicopter experiment
W. Brown, Experiments involving a microwave beam to power and position a helicopter,"
Aerospace and Electronic Systems, IEEE Transactions on, vol. AES-5, pp. 692 {702, sept.
1969.
optical antennas
P. Bharadwaj, B. Deutsch, and L. Novotny, Optical antennas," Adv. Opt. Photon., vol. 1,
pp. 438{483, Nov 2009 and citations therein.
Metal-Insulator-Metal (MIM) diodes
E. W. Cowell, N. Alimardani, C. C. Knutson, J. F. Conley, D. A. Keszler, B. J. Gibbons,
and J. F. Wager, \Advancing mim electronics: Amorphous metal electrodes,"
Advanced
Materials, vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 74{78, 2011.
MIM diodes operate on the
principles of quantum
mechanical tunneling and
can theoretically have a
response time of 1
femtosecond.
Optical rectennas
Bean Jeffrey A., Weeks Arthur, Boreman Glenn D.
IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics (2011 Jan 1) 47: 126-135.
Benefits of this approach over
traditional PV
No exotic materials
Light weight
Broadband
High efficiency limit
Challenges
Metals
Diode speeds
Fabrication
My experiment
Scanning Tunneling Microscopy
Thank you
KNUST
NSF
University of Rochester