Two-dimensional MoS2-enabled flexible rectenna for wireless energy harvesting in the Wi-Fi band (Conference Presentation)

MoS2 has attracted substantial attention due to its atomic thickness and outstanding electronic and mechanical properties. As one of the thinnest semiconductors in the world, MoS2 is promising to build flexible electronics that can be integrated with objects with arbitrary shapes and inspires a vision of distributed ubiquitous electronics. Despite recent advances in two-dimensional materials-based electronics (e.g. 2D materials-based transistors, memory devices and sensors), an efficient and flexible energy harvesting solution is necessary, but still missing, to enable a self-powered system. At the same time, the electromagnetic (EM) radiation in the Wi-Fi band (2.4 GHz and 5.9 GHz) is becoming increasingly ubiquitous and it would be beneficial to be able to wirelessly harvest it to power future distributed electronics. However, the rectennas (i.e. RF energy harvesters) based on flexible semiconductors have not been fast enough to cover the Wi-Fi band due to their limited transport properties. Here we present a unique MoS2 semiconducting-metallic phase heterojunction, which enables a flexible and high-speed Schottky diode with a cutoff frequency of 10 GHz. Due to a novel lateral architecture and self-aligned phase engineering, our MoS2 Schottky diode exhibits significantly reduced parasitic capacitance and series resistance. By integrating the MoS2 rectifier with a flexible Wi-Fi band antenna, we successfully fabricate a fully flexible rectenna that demonstrates direct energy harvesting of EM radiation in the Wi-Fi band with zero external bias (battery-free). Moreover, taking advantage of the nonlinearity of the MoS2 Schottky diode, a frequency mixing in the gigahertz range is also successfully demonstrated on flexible substrates.