E-shaped wideband plasmonic nantennas with linear and dual-linear polarizations

In this paper we present a novel nanoantenna (nantenna) design for energy harvesting. The nantenna has an “E” shape and is placed on a SiO2 substrate. Its operation is based on the excitation of surface plasmon polaritons through the gold arms of the E shape. By varying the lengths and widths of the arms, two overlapping working bandwidths can be achieved. This results in a wideband behavior characterized by a full width at half-maximum of about 2.2 μm centered around 3.6 μm. Two orthogonal E nantennas are placed perpendicular to each other to realize a dual-polarized nantenna. This nantenna can receive the two incident polarizations at two separate gap locations with very high isolation. The proposed structure can be used in several energy harvesting applications, such as scavenging the infrared heat from the Earth and other hot objects, in addition to optical communications.