A high-temperature solar selective absorber based on one-dimensional multilayer nanostructures

Selective absorbers play a crucial role in harvesting solar energy and realizing effective solar-thermal energy conversion in concentrated solar power systems and thermophotovoltaic systems. This study focuses on obtaining a high-temperature solar selective absorber which can well balance its thermal performance as well as structural complexity. Based on this, a selective absorber with simple one-dimensional multilayer nanostructures is designed to adapt to the high-temperature operation environments. The obtained absorber exhibits a total solar absorptance of 0.9504 to the AM1.5 solar radiation. Taking into account the infrared radiation loss, the solar-thermal efficiency of the absorber is found to be 91.2% under 1000 suns at 1273 K, and the total emittance is 0.1504 at the corresponding temperature. The absorber shows high insensitivity to both incident polarization angles and wide-angle incidence. Analysis of impedance and electromagnetic field distribution indicates that the selective absorption performance of the absorber is attributed to its impedance matching properties, resulting from the coupling effect of surface plasmon polaritons and magnetic polaritons.