A mid-IR plasmonic graphene nanorectenna-based energy harvester to power IoT sensors

Energy harvesting (EH) sensors operating up to tens GHz are commercially available nowadays, whereas only a few EH sensors operate over the THz range. To compensate for this lack, we present a rectenna resonant at 10 µm wavelength (28.3 THz) composed of a graphene arrow-bowtie nanoantenna integrated with a metalinsulator-metal (MIM) diode with the aim to power supply a hypothetic IoT wireless sensor. The characteristics of the MIM diode have been analyzed and discussed. The antenna is designed using 3D CST 2021. The performance of the designed nanoantenna placed on two-layer substrate SiO2 and Si respectively have been investigated in terms of graphene sheets and chemical potential (µcp). Finally, the whole system constituted by an NxM (24153846x805128205) nanorectenna array of approximately 78 cm2 integrated with relative MIMs, lowpass filter and a DC-DC converter indicates an output voltage value of 3.3 V and an output current of 10 mA. The results obtained for whole system indicate an encouraging solution to powering IoT wireless sensors.