The increasing energy demands of the world's population and the quickly diminishing fossil fuel reserves together suggest the urgent need to secure long-lasting alternative and renewable energy resources. Here, we present a THz antenna integrated with a rectifier (rectenna) for harvesting infrared energy. We demonstrate a resonant bowtie antenna that has been optimized to produce highly enhanced localized fields at the bow tip. To benefit from this enhancement, the rectifier is realized between the overlapped antenna's arms using a 0.7 nm copper oxide. The thin film diode offers low zero bias resistance of 500 Ω, thus improving the impedance matching with the antenna. In addition, the rectenna prototype demonstrates high zero bias responsivity (4 A/W), which is critical in producing DC current directly from THz signals without the application of an external electric source, particularly for energy harvesting applications.

In this study, vanadium oxide (V_xO_y) semiconducting resistive thermometer thin films were developed, and their temperature-dependent resistive behavior was examined. Multilayers of 5-nm-thick vanadium pentoxide (V₂O₅) and 5-nm-thick vanadium (V) films were alternately sputter-deposited, at room temperature, to form 105-nm-thick V_xO_y films, which were post-deposition annealed at 300 °C in O₂ and N₂ atmospheres for 30 and 40 min. The synthesized V_xO_y thin films were then patterned into resistive thermometer structures, and their resistance versus temperature (R-T) characteristics were measured. Samples annealed in O₂ achieved temperature coefficients of resistance (TCRs) of −3.0036 and −2.4964%/K at resistivity values of 0.01477 and 0.00819 Ω·cm, respectively. Samples annealed in N₂ achieved TCRs of −3.18 and −1.1181%/K at resistivity values of 0.04718 and 0.002527 Ω·cm, respectively. The developed thermometer thin films had TCR/resistivity properties suitable for microbolometer and antenna-coupled microbolometer applications. The employed multilayer synthesis technique was shown to be effective in tuning the TCR/resistivity properties of the thin films by varying the annealing conditions.

Vanadium oxide (V_xO_y) multilayer sandwich structures previously studied by our group were found to yield a sensitive thermometer thin film material suitable for microbolometer applications. In this work, we aim to estimate the performance of a proposed air-bridge microbolometer configuration based on V_xO_y multilayer sandwich structure thermometer thin films. For this purpose, a microbolometer was fabricated on silicon (Si) substrate covered with a silicon nitride (Si₃N₄) insulating layer using V_xO_y thermometer thin film material. The fabricated microbolometer was patterned using electron-beam lithography and liftoff techniques and it was characterized in terms of its voltage repsonsivity (R_v), signal to noise ratio (SNR), noise equivalent power (NEP) and detectivity D*. A model was then developed by the aid of numerical optical/thermal simulations and experimentally measured parameters to estimate the performance of the microbolometer when fabricated in an air-bridge configuration. The estimated D* was found to be 1.55×10⁷ cm.√Hz/ W.

A report is presented on the realisation and characterisation of symmetrical metal‐insulator‐metal (MIM) diodes using the new material combination: copper‐copper oxide‐copper (Cu‐CuO‐Cu). The MIM diodes, having contact areas of 2 × 2 µm ² , were fabricated using electron beam lithography and sputter deposition. The MIM diodes exhibited an absolute sensitivity as high as 4.497 V ^{− 1} .

Since the 1940s, infrared (IR) detection and imaging at wavelengths in the two atmospheric windows of 3 to 5 and 8 to 14 μm has been extensively researched. Through several generations, these detectors have undergone considerable developments and have found use in various applications in different fields including military, space science, medicine and engineering. For the most recently proposed generation, these detectors are required to achieve high-speed detection with spectral and polarization selectivity while operating at room temperature. Antenna coupled IR detectors appear to be the most promising candidate to achieve these requirements and has received substantial attention from research in recent years. This paper sets out to present a review of the antenna coupled IR detector family, to explore the main concepts behind the detectors as well as outline their critical and challenging design considerations. In this context, the design of both elements, the antenna and the sensor, will be presented individually followed by the challenging techniques in the impedance matching between both elements. Some hands-on fabrication techniques will then be explored. Finally, a discussion on the coupled IR detector is presented with the aim of providing some useful insights into promising future work.