Extremely high temperature stable nanometric scale multilayer spectrally selective absorber coating: Emissivity measurements at elevated temperatures and a comprehensive study on ageing mechanism

Spectrally selective W/WAlSiN/SiON/SiO2 solar absorber coatings were sputter-deposited on stainless steel and silicon substrates. The optimized as-deposited sample exhibits a high solar absorptance of 0.955 and a low thermal emissivity of 0.10 at 82 °C. The coating exhibits a very low reflectance of 1.2% in the wavelength range of 0.5–1.5 μm in the solar spectrum. The spectral emissivity measurements at various operating temperatures and with varying emergence angles were investigated. Also, the impact of emissivity on the photothermal efficiency at different temperatures of the developed solar absorber coating was calculated. The calculated optical properties of the as-deposited sample exhibited low thermal emissivity of 0.157 (at 500 °C) and a high heliothermal efficiency of 89.5%. Angular reflectance measured at room temperature illustrates an insignificant change in the hemispherical and near normal emissivities of the samples. In addition to these studies, the ageing tests of the as-deposited samples at various operating temperatures were studied in detail. The thermal ageing tests of the samples in air and vacuum environments indicated excellent thermal stability at elevated temperatures, i.e., in air at 400 °C for 500 h, at 450 °C for 175 h and at 500 °C for 100 h, whereas, in a vacuum it was stable at 700 °C for 200 h. The top anti-reflection layers and the fine nano-multilayers of WAlSiN (W2N and AlSiN) prevent the inward diffusion of oxygen and thereby improve the overall thermal stability of the tandem absorber.