Ambient Infrared Solar Energy Harvesting Using Log-Periodic Optical Rectenna at 28.3 THz

Abstract

This work presents the conception and design of log-periodic nano-antenna for the infrared IR solar energy harvesting applications. The suggested nano-antenna contain three layers. The first layer contains two arms of the log-periodic nano-antenna made of gold (Au), the second is a quartz substrate and finally, the ground layer is a gold (Au) plane reflector. The analysis of the proposed nano-antenna is performed using FDTD technique in the range of frequencies [28 to 29 THz]. A huge parametric study was performed to optimize the different parameters (thickness of the arms, teeth angle, number of teeth, substrate thickness, solid angles, and inner radius) of the nano-antenna. With the optimized design parameters, the structure captures a maximum electric field E at the hotspot point of around 800 V/m. The optimized geometry and shape of the presented structure make it a suitable choice to design a metal-insulator-metal (MIM) rectifier system in order to harvest solar infrared IR energy with good performance in terms of E-field, current-voltage I/V, resistance, and responsivity.