High-temperature and Abrasion Resistant Selective Solar Absorber under Ambient Environment

TL;DR

This paper presents a multilayered metamaterial selective solar absorber with high-temperature resistance, high solar absorption, low emittance, and durability, suitable for practical concentrated solar power applications.

Contribution

The development of a high-temperature, abrasion-resistant multilayered metamaterial SSA with stable optical performance up to 500°C under ambient conditions.

Findings

Achieves over 92% solar absorptance and below 6% thermal emittance.

Maintains optical performance after 1-hour at 500°C and 96-hour at 400°C.

Demonstrates outdoor temperature rise and abrasion resistance.

Abstract

Selective solar absorbers (SSAs) with high performance are the key to concentrated solar power systems. Optical metamaterials are emerging as a promising strategy to enhance selective photon absorption, however, the high-temperature resistance (>500C) remains as one of the main challenges for their practical applications. Here, a multilayered metamaterial system (Al2O3/W/SiO2/W) based on metal-insulator-metal (MIM) resonance effect has been demonstrated with high solar absorptance over 92%, low thermal emittance loss below 6%, and significant high-temperature resistance: it has been proved that the optical performance remains 93.6% after 1-hour thermal annealing under ambient environment up to 500C, and 94.1% after 96-hour thermal cycle test at 400C, which is also confirmed by the microscopic morphology characterization. The spectral selectivity of fabricated SSAs is angular independent and polarization insensitive. Outdoor tests demonstrate that a peak temperature rise (193.5C) can be achieved with unconcentrated solar irradiance and surface abrasion resistance test yields that SSAs have a robust resistance to abrasion attack for engineering applications.