This disclosure relates to rectifiers and detectors of radio frequency signals, more particularly to rectifiers and detectors using the Hall effect and spin-orbit torque.
Scavenging of the ambient radio-frequency (RF) signals is of great current interest, especially in the context of the Internet of Things, device miniaturization, and 3D integration, where integration of self-powered devices will be highly beneficial. However, development of such technologies is severely limited by the conventional semiconductor rectifiers, especially for scavenging from the weak RF signals because of the thermal voltage limit, high-resistance p-n junctions, etc. Most of the conventional technologies become highly inefficient when the input RF power is in the order of ˜100 μW.
Most semiconductor rectifying technologies are significantly inefficient below a few mW of input RF power. Few Schottky diode-based technologies can rectify in the regime of ˜100 μW. A few CMOS based rectifiers have been proposed to have 86% efficiency from input RF power in the order of ˜100 μW. Almost all semiconductor diode based rectifying technologies are limited by the thermal voltage even in the ideal limit. Heterojunction backward tunnel diodes promise to operate approximately two times lower than the thermal voltage limit and has shown rectification from much lower input RF power. One approach has demonstrated an efficiency of 18% from an input RF power in the order of 1 μW while an efficiency of 3% from an input RF power in the order of 100 nW.
Some solutions being investigated include some new materials to go beyond these limitations, including ballistic graphene nanorectifiers, and magnetic tunnel junction based spin-diodes, etc. These new technologies currently have very low RF-to-DC power conversion efficiencies and do not operate well in the weak RF limit. Spin-diodes are growing attention for RF detection, because under an external bias these devices are able to produce large DC voltage for a given RF power, in the order of >104 μV/μW [6−9], while conventional Schottky diodes are limited to <103 μV/μW.
However, these devices work in the μW input power region and the requirement of an external bias is not attractive for energy harvesting. Their no-bias sensitivity is in the order of ˜102 μV/μW and conversion efficiency is <0.1% from an RF power ˜10 μW. Previously, a proposal of potentiometric spin voltage measurements-based rectifier that uses spin-orbit torque materials estimated low efficiency in an all-metallic geometry.
The embodiments propose a new rectifier/detector concept, simultaneously utilizing the Hall effect and spin-orbit-torque that is well matched to the low impedance of antennas. This is promising for general radio detection, and particularly for harvesting ambient weak radio signals, where conventional rectification fails to operate. As used here, the term “weak RF” means radio frequency signals having a power lower than 1 μW.
The embodiments inject RF current in a Hall material to generate a Hall voltage, and use the same RF current in a spin-orbit material to control a magnet. The magnet then applies a magnetic field to the Hall material leading to a rectification of the Hall voltage. The embodiments use a magnet with low anisotropy energy to make it sensitive to low RF currents.
The Hall Effect, and spin-orbit-torque are both proportional to current density, which improves inversely with device cross-sectional area, providing the largest signals at the nanoscale. Using existing materials, a single device can provide 200 μV DC from 500 nW of RF power. A series array of such devices that can efficiently provide 300 mV DC while matching the receiver antenna impedance. Such magnetic devices can rectify weak RF power at low voltage and low impedance where conventional semiconductor rectifiers fail.
The Hall effect occurs when current-carrying conductor placed in a magnetic field (B) exhibits a voltage drop in the direction orthogonal to both the current and the B-field, due to the Hall effect. Interestingly, if one uses a fraction of the applied current to generate the B-field, for example using a solenoid underneath, as shown in
The embodiments here propose a spin-orbit rectifier structure 20 shown in
In an alternative embodiment, the SO bi-layer comprises the ferromagnet 16 stacked on the SO material 14 and arranged under the Hall layer.
The FM applies a B-field on the Hall material along the M-direction, leading to a rectified Hall voltage:
where ρH is the Hall resistivity, and tH is the thickness of the Hall material, and M is the normalized magnetization along the easy-axis.
The minimum current (Imin) for rectification is related to the spin-torque driven switching current which is given by the following expression for a single domain magnet:
where θSH is the spin Hall angle and wso is the SO layer width, L is the device width, α is the Gilbert damping, q is the electron charge and ℏ is the reduced Planck's constant.
The anisotropy energy, Eb, of the ferromagnet depends on the coercive field (Hc), the saturation magnetization (Ms), and the FM volume (vFM). This may be represented by the relationship Eb=½ HcMs vFM. In order to reduce Imin, one wants an FM with low Eb, an SO with high θSH, and an FM-SO interface with low α. The stochastic-LLG (s-LLG) based stimulations take into account the stochastic behavior of the FM due to the thermal field.
Experimentally, Eb has been reduced by lowering the total magnetic moment (Ms×volume) or by tuning the FM thickness to optimize near the transition point between in-plane and perpendicular anisotropies or by using isotropic geometries. The embodiments consider a soft ferrite that exhibits a low Hc and a small FM volume to achieve a substantially low Eb. Such a FM with very low Eb can, in principle, switch stochastically between +1 and −1 due to the thermal noise, which is taken into account in the s-LLG equation-based simulations. A strong spin-orbit torque (SOT) can pin the magnetization to one of the states. A stochastic FM, on average, follows the current-induced SOT, and the average M follows the following relation:
Where Isat is the current required to fully saturate the FM. In a completely stochastic FM driven by high thermal noise, Isat=Imin with Eb 3/2 kBT. Low anisotropy energy magnets can achieve a wide frequency bandwidth of operation, depending on the total magnetic moment in the FM and the angular momentum conservation. Low anisotropy energy as used here is ˜2 kT. A FM with Eb ranging from 0 to 10 kT, in principle, can be called a low anisotropy energy magnet.
The Hall 22 layer can be, but not limited to, InAs, GaAs, InGaAs, InSb, Ge, Si, etc., which are known to have large Hall coefficient due to smaller electron density. For the embodiment in
One embodiment device has a Hall layer, spin-orbit material, and FM each (100 nm)3. Another embodiment has the length, width and thickness of the Hall layer, the SO material and the FM layers as 100 nm, 100 nm, and 50 nm, respectively. The embodiments may use Bi2Se3 with resistivity ˜2 mΩ-cm and θSH=3.5 as the SO layer. The embodiments may use a soft ferrite as the FM which has an anisotropy energy Eb˜2 kBT, calculated from its low coercivity H, =0.4 Oe, saturation field μ0Ms=0.5 T and volume. This anisotropy energy, along with a Gilbert damping of 0.01 provides Imin˜0.1 μA, calculated using Eq. (2). This example has neglected any effect of the demagnetizing field in the FM with low anisotropy energy and with a cubic geometry (no shape anisotropy). Presence of various non-idealities can increase Imin from the calculated value. This example applies an RF current with rms (root mean square) value five times the threshold such as 0.5 μA in the SO, so that the FM can easily follow the RF current. The total RF current in a device is set to 1 μm.
The embodiment uses parameters for InAs as the Hall material and set the doping concentration to n˜1017 cm−3 in order to match the resistivity with the SO material such as 1/qnμn˜2 mΩWcm where the mobility is μn˜3×104 cm2V−1 s−1. Since the resistivity of a ferrite is orders of magnitude higher than the Hall and SO materials, current in the FM is negligible. The total device resistance is 100Ω. Since equal amount of current flows in the SO and the Hall layers, the operating current for a single device can be as small as Iop=0.5 μA. The Hall coefficient is determined by the carrier concentration 1/qn˜62.5 cm3/C. Given that the soft ferrite can provide a saturation field around μ0Ms=0.5 T, and assuming that the field lines in a thin Hall layer do not degrade much, one can calculate a Hall resistivity pH 3.75 mΩ-cm. This will produce a Hall voltage ˜375 μV DC in a single device from a 1 μA rms RF current in the Hall layer.
The magnetization of the FM with low-anisotropy energy nicely follows the IRF, due to the strong SOT, as shown in
One can further enhance the DC voltage strength for a given RF power by connecting multiple devices in series in an array while matching the array impedance with the antenna. For calculation, one can consider a WiFi router positioned 5 meters from the array as the RF source as in
The number of parallel branches in the array can be K=√2×50 μA/IRF≈71. To match the array impedance to the antenna impedance (50Ω), each of the parallel branches can have N devices with resistance Rdev in series, where N×Rdev/K=50Ω. Here, N≈18 using Rdev=200Ω. The DC voltage can be enhanced by ˜N×K times by adding the DC paths of all the devices in series. In this example, if one were to add all the devices in series as shown in
The inductor and capacitor dimensions are such that their reactances cancel out, and the SOT rectifiers in the array receive the maximum power from the antenna. The AC path of the SOT rectifier behaves like a linear resistor and the device does not contain any internal space charge regions like conventional semiconductor devices. However, parasitics arising from interconnects and contacts can make the impedance matching challenging. Other electrical structures with the same characteristics may be used. To differentiate the two types of electrical connections, the paths between devices in parallel branches connected by inductors from the connections through capacitors in each branch, the discussion may refer to inductor connections as “branch electrical connections,” and to the capacitor connections as “device connections.”
The open circuit output DC voltage for a given input RF power, such as S=Vout/PRF, is defined as the sensitivity of the RF detector. Various semiconductor diodes can offer high zero-bias sensitivity, on the order of ˜108 μV/μW from an input power of ˜1 μW. Recently, magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ)-based diodes reported very high sensitivity, on the order of ˜105 μV/μW from 100 nW. However, either an external magnetic or an electric bias is used to enhance the sensitivity of MTJ diodes and zero-bias sensitivity is on the order of 102˜103. A single SOT rectifier can provide a zero-bias sensitivity of 750 μV/μW and an optimized array can provide 4.8×105 μV/μW, from an input RF power in the range of 500 nW, as shown in
where kB is the Boltzmann constant and T is the temperature. For a single SOT rectifier, the expected noise-equivalent power is approximately 2.4 μW/√Hz (calculated using Rdev 400=Ω). The array is matched at Rdev=50Ω and the expected NEP is approximately 1.9 fW/√Hz.
The curvature coefficient of a detector is defined as:
For a conventional diode with I=IS[exp(qV/(mkBT))−1], resulting in γ=q/(mkBT) where m is the diode nonideality factor. For Schottky diodes, the theoretical limit is γ=q/(mkBT), which is 38.65V−1 at T=300K and m=1. Backward tunnel diodes have exhibited a γ higher than this theoretical limit, on the order of 50 to 70 V−1 at zero bias, roughly two times higher than the theoretical limit in the Schottky diodes. The proposed SOT rectifier can exhibit high zero bias γ, on the order of 104 V−1, as shown in
The efficiency of a rectifier is determined by the maximum DC power, PDCmax, produced from a given RF power, PRF, as
where Vcd and Rcd are the open circuit voltage and source resistance between nodes c and d as in
Equation (5) becomes:
In this example, the device was designed such that it provides a high efficiency while matching the antenna impedance, and td≈2tH and W≈L, which in Eq. (5) gives
This results in an efficiency value of ≈71% for the materials and device parameters under consideration, which is observed for ≥500 nW RF power. The efficiency degrades for lower input RF power.
In conclusion, the embodiments provide a nanoscale rectifier concept that is promising for general radio detection and, particularly, for harvesting ambient weak radio signals, where conventional rectification fails to operate. The discussion shows an analysis of a single device in SPICE using existing materials parameters and show that it can provide 200 ρV DC from 500 nW of RF power. A series array of such devices can efficiently enhance the DC voltage to 300 mV while matching the receiver antenna impedance. The expected efficiency is ≈71% at such a low RF power, which makes this nanoscale device promising for powering of the emerging applications such as wearable electronics, self-powered and wireless-powered sensors, and implants. Moreover, the nanoscale rectifier promises to operate at 259 times lower than the thermal voltage limit in the conventional semiconductor-based rectifiers.
It will be appreciated that variants of the above-disclosed and other features and functions, or alternatives thereof, may be combined into many other different systems or applications. Various presently unforeseen or unanticipated alternatives, modifications, variations, or improvements therein may be subsequently made by those skilled in the art which are also intended to be encompassed by the embodiments.
This application claims priority to and the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 63/107,215 filed Oct. 29, 2020, which is incorporated herein in its entirety.
This invention was made with Government support under Contract 0939514 awarded by the National Science Foundation. The Government has certain rights in this invention.
Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind |
---|---|---|---|
PCT/US2021/057086 | 10/28/2021 | WO |
Number | Date | Country | |
---|---|---|---|
63107215 | Oct 2020 | US |