| AVS 62nd International Symposium & Exhibition | |
| Electronic Materials and Processing | Monday Sessions |
| Session EM+AS+SS-MoM |
| Session: | Rectenna Solar Cells, MIM Diodes, and Oxide Interfaces |
| Presenter: | Heylal Mashaal, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel |
| Authors: | H. Mashaal, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel J.M. Gordon, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
The prospect of employing aperture rectennas for solar power conversion will be explored in this presentation. Sunlight is commonly viewed as incoherent – hence seemingly unsuitable for antenna harvesting – but all electromagnetic radiation exhibits spatial coherence on a sufficiently small scale. The first direct measurement of the spatial coherence of sunlight will be presented, and the ramifications for using optical concentrators that can effectively replace orders of magnitude of antenna and rectifier elements will be discussed.
Rooted in the partial spatial coherence of sunlight, a derivation of the thermodynamic limit for coherence-limited solar power conversion will be presented – an expansion of Landsberg’s elegant basic bound, originally limited to incoherent converters at maximum flux concentration. The results do not depend on a particular conversion strategy. As such, they pertain to systems that span geometric to physical optics.
Last, a basic upper bound will be presented for the ability to rectify the broadband signals using a full wave rectification scheme.
Our findings indicate promising potential for rectenna power conversion.