Please Vote for Solar Antennas Idea in Competition

[afgncaap]

Please vote for this entry in the 2010 Dell Social Innovation Competition: Jonathan Becker, a Ph.D. student in the ECE BiCoastal Ph.D. Program, has entered the 2010 Dell Social Innovation Competition with his idea entry "Converting Light Spectra into DC Electricity Using Solar Antennas." This idea entry is a Ph.D. project that Jonathan is developing along with his Ph.D. advisors Professors Jason Lohn and Ted Selker at the Silicon Valley Campus. In addition to 50 entries selected by the judges, the 10 entries with the most votes will also move forward as semifinalists, so please vote for Jonathan's entry at Dell Social Innovation Competition | Converting Light Spectra into DC Electricity Using Solar Antennas

 

Your support is greatly appreciated. :phones:

[JMJones0424]

The link you provide is incredibly vague. Would you care to expound on what it is you plan to do and how you plan to do it?

[afgncaap]

Right now, we have funding for another project. However, we have aspirations for the solar antennas project and are in the "looking for funds" stage. (This is why I submitted the idea to the 2010 Dell Social Innovations Competition, as $50K would certainly help fund this research.)

 

At this time, after getting funding, our plan is to figure out if solar antennas can be made via rectifying antennas (a.k.a. rectennas) at all. Novack et. al. at the Idaho National Labs have proven that antennas can be made to resonate at light (a.k.a. TeraHertz) frequencies, but they and others lack the conversion circuitry that can convert these antennas' outputs into usable DC or 60 Hz AC currents. We are not convinced that the rectenna concept would work, as it is very difficult to make diodes that can operate at light frequencies. I know of one group that successfully made diodes that could operate at 30 THz, yet this would still be considered the frontier of semiconductor device physics. To my knowledge, no one else has repeated the works of Novack et. al. and the group that made the 30 THz diodes. (I've seen plenty of groups who have shown that the rectenna concept works as a RF / microwave energy harvesting scheme in general, but these works have been limited to 100 GHz at most -- far less than light frequencies.) This is why we are also considering other means of making solar antennas such as nanotubes / nanocones, RF MEMS, and even photosynthesis. So, long answer short: Our plan is to verify previous group's work (while collaborating with them), see if we can integrate nano-antennas and THz diode circuitry to make solar antennas, and if that doesn't work, see what other techniques would work.

 

I hope my explanation shed some light on the subject (excuse the pun). If you find my explanation vague, though, please bear in mind that we are in early stages of our research, and we do not have real answers as of yet. (If we did, I'd already have earned my Ph.D. )

 

-Jonathan