Demonstration of resonant tunneling effects in metal-double-insulator-metal (MI<sup>2</sup>M) diodes.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 34006880.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-021-23182-0 and PMC identifier 8131372.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Although the effect of resonant tunneling in metal-double-insulator-metal (MI<sup>2</sup>M) diodes has been predicted for over two decades, no experimental demonstrations have been reported at the low voltages needed for energy harvesting rectenna applications. Using quantum-well engineering, we demonstrate the effects of resonant tunneling in a Ni/NiO/Al<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub>/Cr/Au MI<sup>2</sup>M structures and achieve the usually mutually exclusive desired characteristics of low resistance ([Formula: see text] 13 kΩ for 0.035 μm<sup>2</sup>) and high responsivity (β<sub>0</sub> = 0.5 A W<sup>-1</sup>) simultaneously. By varying the thickness of insulators to modify the depth and width of the MI<sup>2</sup>M quantum well, we show that resonant quasi-bound states can be reached at near zero-bias, where diodes self-bias when driven by antennas illuminated at 30 THz. We present an improvement in energy conversion efficiency by more than a factor of 100 over the current state-of-the-art, offering the possibility of engineering efficient energy harvesting rectennas.