Study of the radiation efficiency of nano-dipoles

Author

Vandenbosch, G.A.E. ; Ma, Z.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng., Katholieke Univ. Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

fYear

2012

Firstpage

916

Lastpage

919

Abstract

The radiation efficiency of nano-antennas is a key parameter in the emerging field of IR and optical energy harvesting. This parameter is the first factor in the total efficiency product by which nano antennas are able to convert incident light into useful energy. This efficiency is investigated in terms of the metal used as conductor and the dimensions of the nano antenna. The results set upper bounds for any possible process transforming light into electrical energy. These upper bounds are the equivalent of the theoretical upper bounds for the efficiency of conventional solar cells. Silver shows the highest efficiencies, with radiation efficiencies near or slightly above 90 %, and a total solar power harvesting efficiency of about 60-70 %. This is considerably higher than conventional solar cells. It is found that fine-tuning of the dipole dimensions is crucial to optimize the efficiency.

Keywords

conductors (electric); dipole antennas; nanoelectronics; solar cells; IR energy harvesting; dipole dimension fine-tuning; nanoantennas; nanodipole radiation efficiency; optical energy harvesting; solar cells; solar power harvesting; theoretical upper bounds; Dipole antennas; Photovoltaic cells; Rectifiers; Silver; Upper bound;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Electromagnetics in Advanced Applications (ICEAA), 2012 International Conference on

Conference_Location

Cape Town

Print_ISBN

978-1-4673-0333-0

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ICEAA.2012.6328765

Filename

6328765