Two-dimensional MoS2-enabled flexible rectenna for Wi-Fi-band wireless energy harvesting

Xu Zhang; Jesús Grajal; Jose Luis Vazquez-Roy; Ujwal Radhakrishna; Xiaoxue Wang; Winston Chern; Lin Zhou; Yuxuan Lin; Pin-Chun Shen; Xiang Ji; Xi Ling; Ahmad Zubair; Yuhao Zhang; Han Wang; Madan Dubey; Jing Kong; Mildred Dresselhaus; Tomás Palacios

doi:10.1038/s41586-019-0892-1

Two-dimensional MoS₂-enabled flexible rectenna for Wi-Fi-band wireless energy harvesting

Nature. 2019 Feb;566(7744):368-372. doi: 10.1038/s41586-019-0892-1. Epub 2019 Jan 28.

Authors

Xu Zhang¹, Jesús Grajal², Jose Luis Vazquez-Roy³, Ujwal Radhakrishna¹, Xiaoxue Wang⁴, Winston Chern¹, Lin Zhou¹, Yuxuan Lin¹, Pin-Chun Shen¹, Xiang Ji¹, Xi Ling⁵, Ahmad Zubair¹, Yuhao Zhang¹, Han Wang⁶, Madan Dubey⁷, Jing Kong¹, Mildred Dresselhaus^{1

8}, Tomás Palacios⁹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
² Information Processing and Telecommunications Center, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain.
³ Department of Signal Theory and Communications, University Carlos III of Madrid, Madrid, Spain.
⁴ Department of Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
⁵ Department of Chemistry, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA.
⁶ Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
⁷ Army Research Laboratory, Adelphi, MD, USA.
⁸ Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
⁹ Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA. [email protected].

PMID: 30692651
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-0892-1

Abstract

The mechanical and electronic properties of two-dimensional materials make them promising for use in flexible electronics^1-3. Their atomic thickness and large-scale synthesis capability could enable the development of 'smart skin'^1,3-5, which could transform ordinary objects into an intelligent distributed sensor network⁶. However, although many important components of such a distributed electronic system have already been demonstrated (for example, transistors, sensors and memory devices based on two-dimensional materials^1,2,4,7), an efficient, flexible and always-on energy-harvesting solution, which is indispensable for self-powered systems, is still missing. Electromagnetic radiation from Wi-Fi systems operating at 2.4 and 5.9 gigahertz⁸ is becoming increasingly ubiquitous and would be ideal to harvest for powering future distributed electronics. However, the high frequencies used for Wi-Fi communications have remained elusive to radiofrequency harvesters (that is, rectennas) made of flexible semiconductors owing to their limited transport properties^9-12. Here we demonstrate an atomically thin and flexible rectenna based on a MoS₂ semiconducting-metallic-phase heterojunction with a cutoff frequency of 10 gigahertz, which represents an improvement in speed of roughly one order of magnitude compared with current state-of-the-art flexible rectifiers^9-12. This flexible MoS₂-based rectifier operates up to the X-band⁸ (8 to 12 gigahertz) and covers most of the unlicensed industrial, scientific and medical radio band, including the Wi-Fi channels. By integrating the ultrafast MoS₂ rectifier with a flexible Wi-Fi-band antenna, we fabricate a fully flexible and integrated rectenna that achieves wireless energy harvesting of electromagnetic radiation in the Wi-Fi band with zero external bias (battery-free). Moreover, our MoS₂ rectifier acts as a flexible mixer, realizing frequency conversion beyond 10 gigahertz. This work provides a universal energy-harvesting building block that can be integrated with various flexible electronic systems.

Publication types

Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.