Abstract
Although the effect of resonant tunneling in metal-double-insulator-metal (MI2M) diodes has been predicted for over two decades, no experimental demonstrations have been reported at the low voltages needed for energy harvesting rectenna applications. Using quantum-well engineering, we demonstrate the effects of resonant tunneling in a Ni/NiO/Al2O3/Cr/Au MI2M structures and achieve the usually mutually exclusive desired characteristics of low resistance ({R}_{0}^{DC} sim 13 kΩ for 0.035 μm2) and high responsivity (β0 = 0.5 A W−1) simultaneously. By varying the thickness of insulators to modify the depth and width of the MI2M quantum well, we show that resonant quasi-bound states can be reached at near zero-bias, where diodes self-bias when driven by antennas illuminated at 30 THz. We present an improvement in energy conversion efficiency by more than a factor of 100 over the current state-of-the-art, offering the possibility of engineering efficient energy harvesting rectennas.
Highlights
The effect of resonant tunneling in metal-double-insulator-metal (MI2M) diodes has been predicted for over two decades, no experimental demonstrations have been reported at the low voltages needed for energy harvesting rectenna applications
We present the first experimental demonstration of resonant tunneling effects in MI2M diodes, where a reduction in resistance is observed with an increase in responsivity
We expected responsivity to increase with resistance as oxide thickness and tunneling distance were increased, based on the hundreds of different diodes that we have fabricated and measured, as well as trends observed by Herner et al.[6] and Bean et al.[5]
Summary
The effect of resonant tunneling in metal-double-insulator-metal (MI2M) diodes has been predicted for over two decades, no experimental demonstrations have been reported at the low voltages needed for energy harvesting rectenna applications. Breaking this wellestablished trend requires the use of a non-standard approach, such as resonant tunneling, which has been predicted to offer a reduction in resistance with an increase in diode nonlinearity[7,8] These two normally competing characteristics when achieved simultaneously could move energy harvesting rectennas from the exploration phase, where total power conversion efficiency is ~10−10, to commercial phase, with a promise of orders of magnitude improvement in diode rectification efficiency. We verified the possibility of extending the effects of resonant tunneling to high frequency by measuring these diodes in rectennas under 10.6 μm illumination, and achieving an improvement in overall conversion efficiency over structures without resonant tunneling These MIM diodes present the best multiterahertz current–voltage (I(V)) characteristics to date
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