Demonstration of Thermoradiative Power Generation Using Compensated Infrared Rectennas

Journal article, 2023

Thermoradiative devices convert low-temperature waste heat to electricity. These devices harvest heat and generate energy using deep space as a heat sink by radiating through the 8 to 13 μm atmospheric window. Infrared rectennas, which consist of ultrahigh speed diodes coupled to micrometer-scale antennas, can be tuned to these frequencies and are a good candidate for thermoradiative power generation at room temperature, if certain challenges can be circumvented. Practical optical rectennas require a high diode conversion efficiency, a high coupling efficiency between the diode and antenna, and a large array of devices sufficient to produce significant power. The novelty of our approach lies in designing and building a diode compensation structure at terahertz and arraying 250000 diodes, two approaches that have never been reported before. We demonstrate that a Ni/NiO/Al2O3/Cr/Au metal-double insulator-metal (MI2M) diode-based infrared rectenna with a 2.5 μm transmission line compensation structure in a staggered array can produce power from a temperature difference, and with development, it has the potential to produce competitive power outputs.