Efficiency limits for the rectification of solar radiation

Heylal Mashaal, Jeffrey M. Gordon

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

7 Scopus citations

Abstract

Efficiency limits for rectifying (converting AC to DC) incoherent broadband radiation are presented, prompted by establishing a fundamental bound for solar rectennas. For an individual full-wave rectifier, the bound is 2/π. The efficiency boosts attainable with cascaded rectifiers are also derived. The derivation of the broadband limit follows from the analysis of an arbitrary number of random-phase sinusoidal signals, which is also relevant for harvesting ambient radio-frequency radiation from a discrete number of uncorrelated sources.

Original languageEnglish
Article number193509
JournalJournal of Applied Physics
Volume113
Issue number19
DOIs
StatePublished - 21 May 2013

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Physics and Astronomy

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Efficiency limits for the rectification of solar radiation'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this