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We have demonstrated an extremely low voltage rectifier by using p-GaN gate AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistors. In contrast to conventional GaN rectifiers, the turn-on voltage and on-state current can be decoupled, resulting in low turn-on voltage of 0.05 V and high on-state current achieved simultaneously with p-GaN designs. Furthermore, the role of p-GaN layer on currentâ€"voltage characteristics of p-GaN gated anode diode was investigated, indicating the p-GaN layer is the source of hole current. Combined the electron current with hole current, the total current was enhanced significantly with the ohmic p-GaN gate electrode. Finally, full-wave AC to DC rectification was demonstrated by a monolithically-integrated diode bridge rectifier with four p-GaN gated anode diodes. The bridge rectifier is able to operate at an input signal as low as 0.18 V, which is very promising for future power conversion applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a frequency-selective surface (FSS) that is specially designed and optimized for ambient RF energy harvesting. The unit cell geometry incorporates channeling features in order to combine the collected power from multiple unit cells, allowing for efficient operation under low-power conditions. To demonstrate its performance, we designed and fabricated a matched full-wave rectifier integrated with the absorber FSS. Radiated measurements for the complete rectenna system are included in this paper demonstrating strong agreement with the simulation results. The proposed periodic structure absorbs 97% of the available energy at its resistive load, thus making it an ideal candidate for energy harvesting and channeling applications. Overall Radiation-to-dc conversion efficiency of the fabricated prototype was measured to be 61% when the collected power at the rectifier was 15 dBm. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents a new approach to realizing full-wave rectification for electromagnetic energy harvesting. Instead of using one antenna to feed one rectifier circuit, we propose utilizing two antennas connected to one rectifier to form a full-wave rectenna. This balanced configuration allows the received power to be rectified and transferred to a dc load between two antennas, making it very easy to channel the harvested power in rectenna arrays. The proposed concept is demonstrated in the microwave regime using an array of full-wave rectennas optimized for 2.45 GHz. The full-wave rectenna array is compared with an array of half-wave rectennas that occupy the same footprint and are optimized to maximize power absorption at the same frequency. Measurements showed that the proposed full-wave rectifier performed better than the half-wave rectifier and achieved 74% radiation-to-dc conversion efficiency. Here, without loss of generality, the proposed concept is demonstrated using T-matched dipole antennas at a specific frequency, but the concept can be applied to other antenna types and other frequencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The discontinuous patterns in neonatal magnetoencephalographic (MEG) data are quantified with a novel Hilbert phase (HP) based approach. The expert neurologists' scores were used as the gold standard. The performance of this approach was analyzed using a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve, and it was compared with two other approaches, namely spectral ratio (SR) and discrete wavelet transform (DWT) that have been proposed for the detection of discontinuous patterns in neonatal EEG. The area under the ROC curve (AUC) was used as a performance measure. AUCs obtained for SR, HP, and DWT were 0.87, 0.80, and 0.56, respectively. Although the performance of HP was lower than SR, it carries information about the frequency content of the signal that helps to distinguish brain patterns from artifacts such as cardiac residuals. Based on this property, the HP approach was extended to fetal MEG data. Further, using the frequency property of the HP approach, burst duration and interburst interval were computed for the discontinuous patterns detected and they are in agreement with reported values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A nano self-gating diode (SGD) based on nanoscale semiconducting material is proposed, simulated, and realized on semiconducting carbon nanotubes (CNTs) through a doping-free fabrication process. The relationships between the performance and material/structural parameters of the SGD are explored through numerical simulation and verified by experiment results. Based on these results, performance optimization strategy is outlined, and high performance CNT SGDs are fabricated and demonstrated to surpass other published CNT diodes. In particular the CNT SGD exhibits high rectifier factor of up to 1.4 × 10(6) while retains large on-state current. Benefiting from high yield and stability, CNT SGDs are used for constructing logic and analog integrated circuits. Two kinds of basic digital gates (AND and OR) have been realized on chip through using CNT SGDs and on-chip Ti wire resistances, and a full wave rectifier circuit has been demonstrated through using two CNT SGDs. Although demonstrated here using CNT SGDs, this device structure may in principle be implemented using other semiconducting nanomaterials, to provide ideas and building blocks for electronic applications based on nanoscale materials.