Electromagnetic Modelling of Solar Light Harvesting

Prof. Davide Mencarelli
Università Politecnica delle Marche, Italy

Abstract: Research on energy harvesting device points to the integration the energy-harvesting component in self-powering nano-systems. Prototypes of the integrated components will be developed incorporating nano-optical antennas with nano-rectifiers, namely rectennas, and micro-energy storage components. Here it is shown, through numerical simulations, that nanoarray antennas with small lattice pitch provides frequency flattening of the lattice impedance over the whole solar spectrum, eventually allowing for excellent matching with the antennas’ loads. Also, the small pitch allows for a smooth dependence of the receiving efficiency on the angle of incidence of sunlight. It is also shown numerically that the reflecting mirror also allows for an almost complete cancellation of light scattered by the receiving antennas. The final result is a polarization insensitive receiving theoretical efficiency over the whole solar spectral range.

Speaker’s Bio: Davide Mencarelli received the Laurea in Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering from University Politecnica of Marche (UNIVPM), Ancona, Italy in 2002. He obtained the PhD degree in 2005 from UNIVPM, in Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering. He was graduated in 2006 for enabling Professional Engineer. Since 2014, he is Assistant Professor at the Department of Information Engineering of UNIVPM. His research activity spans over a wide area, including: coherent charge transport in low dimensional systems, photonic crystals, nano–field effect transistors (nano-FET), planar slot array antennas and microwave components, Scanning Probe Microscopy (SPM), Optomechanics and Phononic devices. Awards, memberships and positions: i) IEEE MTT‐S Speaker Bureau, ii) voting member of the Nanotechnology Council (NTC) AdCom, iii) Member of the Italian Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN), iv) Member of the MTT TC 25 Technical Committee, “RF Nanotechnology”, approved by the MTT-S in 2010, http://mtt25.dibet.univpm.it/, v) Associate Editor of “Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology”, Intech open acces publisher, ISSN 1847-9804, DOI 10.5772/5, and of “Journal of Computational Electronics” https://link.springer.com/journal/10825.

This webinar is organized by IEEE Nanotechnology Council & IEEE Microwave Theory and Technology Society REGION 8 YPs.