Metamaterial electromagnetic energy harvester with high selective harvesting for left- and right-handed circularly polarized waves

In this paper, a metamaterial electromagnetic energy harvester constructed via the capacitive loading of metal circular split rings is presented. Each energy-harvesting cell is loaded with a resistance that imitates the input impedance of a rectifier circuit. Specifically, the metamaterial energy harvester has high selective harvesting for left- and right-handed circularly polarized waves. Here, the energy absorption is mostly induced by the resistive load; thus, effective energy harvesting can be achieved. Moreover, the proposed energy harvester exhibits a high-efficiency harvesting for right-handed circularly polarized waves over a wide range of incident angles. Further, a transmission line model is adopted to interpret the energy harvesting mechanism, which shows that a good impedance matching and low dielectric loss can further enhance the harvesting efficiency. To demonstrate the design, a 15 × 15 unit-cell prototype is fabricated and measured, and the measured results reasonably agree with the simulated ones.