Midinfrared radiation energy harvesting device

Hong-Ren Lin; Wei-Chih Wang

doi:10.1117/1.JPE.7.038001

4 August 2017 Midinfrared radiation energy harvesting device

Hong-Ren Lin, Wei-Chih Wang

Author Affiliations +

Journal of Photonics for Energy, Vol. 7, Issue 3, 038001 (August 2017). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JPE.7.038001

Abstract

The International Energy Agency reports a 17.6% annual growth rate in sustainable energy production. However, sustainable power generation based on environmental conditions (wind and solar) requires an infrastructure that can handle intermittent power generation. An electromagnetic thermoelectric (EMTE) device to overcome the intermittency problems of current sustainable energy technologies, providing the continuous supply unachievable by photovoltaic cells with portability impossible for traditional thermoelectric (TE) generators, is proposed. The EMTE converts environmental electromagnetic waves to a voltage output without requiring additional input. A single cell of this TE-inspired broadband EMTE can generate a 19.50 nV output within a 7.2-μm² area, with a verified linear scalability of the output voltage through cell addition. This idea leads to a challenge: the electrical polarity of each row of cells is the same but may require additional routing to combine output from each row. An innovative layout is proposed to overcome this issue through switching the electrical polarity every other row. In this scheme, the EM wave absorption spectrum is not altered, and a simple series connection can be implemented to boost the total voltage output by 1 order within a limited area.

Citation Download Citation

Hong-Ren Lin and Wei-Chih Wang "Midinfrared radiation energy harvesting device," Journal of Photonics for Energy 7(3), 038001 (4 August 2017). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JPE.7.038001

Received: 28 April 2017; Accepted: 30 June 2017; Published: 4 August 2017

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