Optical antennas have been proposed as an alternative option for solar energy harvesting. In this work the power conversion efficiency of broadband antennas, log-periodic, square-spiral, and archimedian-spiral antennas, coupled to Metal-Insulator-Metal and Esaki rectifying diodes has been obtained from both theoretical and numerical simulation perspectives. The results show efficiencies in the order of 10(-6) to 10(-9) for these rectifying mechanisms, which is very low for practical solar energy harvesting applications. This is mainly caused by the poor performance of diodes at the given frequencies and also due to the antenna-diode impedance mismatch. If only losses due to antenna-diode impedance mismatch are considered an efficiency of about 10(-3) would be obtained. In order to make optical antennas useful for solar energy harvesting new rectification devices or a different harvesting mechanism should be used.

A vibration energy harvester using magnet/piezoelectric composite transducer J. Appl. Phys. 115, 17E522 (2014); 10.1063/1.4867599Tuning the current ratio of a CPV system to maximize the energy harvesting in a particular location AIP Conf.

Arrays of metallic thermocouples in the shape of spiral nanoantennas are proposed as infrared detectors, which use the thermoelectric properties of the metallic interfaces to generate electrical DC signals. The responsivity of these types of antennas is evaluated from both theoretical and numerical perspectives pointing out its potential as infrared sensors. Moreover, the same structures can be used to characterize the state of polarization of the optical near fields with a spatial resolution comparable to the wavelength.

In this letter, self-switching nanochannels have been proposed as an enabling technology for energy gathering in the terahertz (THz) regime. Such devices combine their diode-like behavior and high-speed of operation in order to generate DC electrical power from high-frequency signals. By using finite-element simulations, we have improved the sensitivity of L-shaped and V-shaped nanochannels based on InAlAs/InGaAs samples. Since those devices combine geometrical effects with their rectifying properties at zero-bias, we have improved their performance by optimizing their shape. Results show nominal sensitivities at zero-bias in the order of 40 V−1 and 20 V−1, attractive values for harvesting applications with square-law rectifiers.