Nano Energy Harvesting with Plasmonic Nano-Antennas: A review of {MID}-{IR} Rectenna and Application

Drones, a technical nickname for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are gaining more and more interest and popularity. Supported by the miniaturization and cost reduction of electronic components, a new class of UAVs called Nano-air vehicles or NAVs represent the future technology for indoor and outdoor mission. One of the main considerations when building or buying a drone is the flight time and range. The flight time is nowadays a drawback for miniature unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). It is limited to a few minutes before requiring a forced recovery to replace exhausted batteries. Currently the batteries are the dominant technology, which possess limited operation in time and energy. The real viability to extending flight time (FT) of NAVs is possibly exploring new and more disruptive alternative solution able either to recharge a battery, or even to directly power the NAVs during the flight. A Plasmonic Nano Energy harvester is an attractive technology to extending the FT extracting the energy in mid-infrared radiation emitted from Earth’s surface with Rectenna tuned to mid-infrared wavelengths (7 –14μm) with a peak wavelength of about10μm . In this review the concepts emerging from this work identify and suggest how this novel harvester can constantly supply these flying objects for the whole day.