American engineers developed optical rectennas to turn light directly into DC

Recently, engineers at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the United States have developed an optical rectifying antenna that converts light directly into direct current. Researchers believe that this achievement is expected to provide a new light detection technology that does not require refrigeration, and can also collect waste heat into electricity, and eventually become a new way to use solar energy.

The optical rectifying antenna can operate at temperatures between 5 ° C and 77 ° C and uses carbon nanotubes as an antenna to capture sunlight or other light sources. When light waves strike the nanotubes, the generated oscillating charge passes through the rectifier, which switches at a frequency of gigahertz to produce tiny direct current. Although the current efficiency of the device is only 1%, billions of rectennas are arrayed to generate a powerful current.

Rectifier antennas were developed in the 1960s and 1970s and generally operate in the wavelength range of about 10 microns. The new rectennas enter the visible range, requiring antennas and rectifier diodes to be small enough to capture electromagnetic oscillations very quickly. Barattid Kola, an associate professor at the George Woodrough School of Mechanical Engineering, explained: "The rectenna is essentially an antenna with a diode, but in the visible range, it means using a nano-antenna with a metal-insulation-metal. Diodes. The closer the antenna is to the diode, the higher the efficiency. Therefore, the ideal structure is to use the antenna as the metal in the diode - this is the structure we made."

According to the physicist's organization network, the researchers first developed vertically aligned carbon nanotube bundles on a conductive substrate, and then used a variety of nanofabrication techniques to create a metal-insulator-metal multilayer rectifier. In operation, the oscillating wave of light passes through the calcium-aluminum electrode and interacts with the nanotube. The rectifier at the top of the nanotube can switch at femtosecond speed, allowing the electrons generated by the antenna to enter the electrode from only one direction.

Kola said that the current rectifying antennas need to improve efficiency. Opening carbon nanotubes to achieve multi-conducting channels and reducing resistance will eventually result in solar cells with twice the current efficiency and lower cost.

Researchers also hope to increase output power through optimization techniques, and they believe that commercially available rectennas may appear within a year. Related papers were published online on September 29th (Beijing time) in Nature·Nanotechnology.

The wireless charging technology that is highly anticipated is the rectifying antenna, which converts electromagnetic waves into energy. In the past, the rectifying antenna could only receive microwaves; this time, relying on nanotechnology, the rectifying antenna broke through the limit and finally captured visible light. It is very likely that the chip can be powered by artificially transmitted microwaves and solar energy in the future. jobs. At that time, not only did the network cover every corner, but mobile phone users did not need to use mobile power.

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