Electrical power generation from a moderate-temperature thermal source by means of direct conversion of infrared radiation is important and highly desirable for energy harvesting from waste heat and micropower applications. Here, we demonstrate direct rectified power generation from an unbiased large-area nanoantenna-coupled tunnel diode rectifier called a rectenna. Using a vacuum radiometric measurement technique with irradiation from a temperature-stabilized thermal source, a generated power density of 8 nW/cm2 is observed at a source temperature of 450 °C for the unbiased rectenna across an optimized load resistance. The optimized load resistance for the peak power generation for each temperature coincides with the tunnel diode resistance at zero bias and corresponds to the impedance matching condition for a rectifying antenna. Current-voltage measurements of a thermally illuminated large-area rectenna show current zero crossing shifts into the second quadrant indicating rectification. Photon-assisted tunneling in the unbiased rectenna is modeled as the mechanism for the large short-circuit photocurrents observed where the photon energy serves as an effective bias across the tunnel junction. The measured current and voltage across the load resistor as a function of the thermal source temperature represents direct current electrical power generation.
The transfer Hamiltonian tunneling current is derived in a time-dependent density matrix formulation and is used to examine photon-assisted tunneling. Bardeen's tunneling expression arises as the result of first-order perturbation theory in a mean-field expansion of the density matrix. Photon-assisted tunneling from confined electromagnetic fields in the forbidden tunnel barrier region occurs due to time-varying polarization and wave-function overlap in the gap which leads to a nonzero tunneling current in asymmetric device structures, even in an unbiased state. The photon energy is seen to act as an effective temperature-dependent bias in a uniform barrier asymmetric tunneling example problem. Higher-order terms in the density matrix expansion give rise to multiphoton enhanced tunneling currents that can be considered an extension of nonlinear optics where the nonlinear conductance plays a similar role as the nonlinear susceptibilities in the continuity equations.
