Optical Properties of Solar Absorber Materials and Structures

This book presents an overview of both the theory and experimental methods required to realize high efficiency solar absorber devices. It begins with a historical description of the study of spectrally selective solar absorber materials and structures based on optical principles and methods developed over the past few decades. The optical properties of metals and dielectric materials are addressed to provide the background necessary to achieve high performance of the solar absorber devices as applied in the solar energy field. In the following sections, different types of materials and structures, together with the relevant experimental methods, are discussed for practical construction and fabrication of the solar absorber devices, aiming to maximally harvest the solar energy while at the same time effectively suppressing the heat-emission loss. The optical principles and methods used to evaluate the performance of solar absorber devices with broad applications in different physicalconditions are presented. The book is suitable for graduate students in applied physics, and provides a valuable reference for researchers working actively in the field of solar energy.

Autorentext
Liang-Yao Chen received his PhD from Iowa State University. He is a Professor of Optical Science and Engineering at Fudan University in China.

Inhalt

1. Introduction

2. Conventional electromagnetic theory

2.1 Maxwell's equations and the dielectric function

2.2 Light propagation in the solid

2.3 Reflection and refraction of light at the interface 2.4 Optical absorption of the media

2.5 Thermal emittance of the surface

3. Optical properties of the solar materials

3.1 Photon-to-electron conversions

3.2 Free electron absorption based on the Drude model 3.3 Interband transitions

3.3 Effective medium approximation models

3.4 Optical constants of metals and dielectric media

3.5 The extraction of optical constants of refractive index and extinction coefficient

4. Optical characteristic of the solar absorbers

4.1 Spectrally-weighted broadband solar absorption 4.2 Thermal gain and lose of the infrared absorption and reflection

4.3 Optical evaluation of the solar absorbers

5. Intrinsic solar selective materials

6. Semiconductor-metal tandems

7. Metal-dielectric-based multilayers

8. Metal-dielectric-composited cermets

9. Nano-textured surface structures

10. Photonic-crystal-based metamaterials and designs

11. Experimental methods

11.1 Physical fabrication of the solar absorbers

11.2 Optical measurement of the solar absorption and reflection

11.3 Experimental measurement of the thermal emittance

12. Broad applications of the solar selective absorbers

12.1 Temperature-dependent efficiency

12.2 Effect of low and high solar concentrations

12.3 Thermal energy extraction apparatus

12.4 Concentrated solar power (CSP), solar thermophotovoltaics (STPV) and solar thermoelectric generators (STEGs)

12.5 System evaluation of the solar-to-thermal conversion efficiency

13. Summary

14. Acknowledgement