Optimized tapered dipole nanoantenna as efficient energy harvester.

In this paper, a novel design of tapered dipole nanoantenna is introduced and numerically analyzed for energy harvesting applications. The proposed design consists of three steps tapered dipole nanoantenna with rectangular shape. Full systematic analysis is carried out where the antenna impedance, return loss, harvesting efficiency and field confinement are calculated using 3D finite element frequency domain method (3D-FEFD). The structure geometrical parameters are optimized using particle swarm algorithm (PSO) to improve the harvesting efficiency and reduce the return loss at wavelength of 500 nm. A harvesting efficiency of 55.3% is achieved which is higher than that of conventional dipole counterpart by 29%. This enhancement is attributed to the high field confinement in the dipole gap as a result of multiple tips created in the nanoantenna design. Furthermore, the antenna input impedance is tuned to match a wide range of fabricated diode based upon the multi-resonance characteristic of the proposed structure. (C) 2016 Optical Society of America