Thermoelectric Device Based on Microstrip Nanoantennas for Distributed Radar Networks

Abstract

A device comprised of gold patch antennas with Bi₂Te₃ and Sb₂Te₃ thermoelectric lines has been fabricated using optical lithography and characterized using a vector network analyzer (VNA) to analyze the thermoelectric voltage as a function of electromagnetic power. Simulation results show that this device has a resonance at 10 GHz. The calculated bandwidth for this dual microstrip patch is 7 GHz which is an improvement over non-thermoelectric rectangular microstrip patches which are known to be narrow-band antennas. Experimental results where the source antenna power was varied from 0 to 10 mW (−20 dB) show that the resulting thermoelectric voltage measured at the thermoelectric antenna ranged from 0 to 17.5 µV. Hence, the thermoelectric device based in microstrip nanoantennas has a responsivity of 1.75 µV/mW.