Optical design and co-sputtering preparation of high performance Mo-SiO ₂ cermet solar selective absorbing coating

In order to optimize and prepare high performance Mo-SiO ₂ cermet solar selective absorbing coating, a series of Mo-SiO ₂ cermet films with different metal volume fraction were deposited on optical glass using mid-frequency (MF) and radio frequency (RF) co-sputtering. The reflectance (R) and transmittance (T) in the wavelength range of 250-2500 nm have been simulated using SCOUT software with different dielectric function models. The optical constants, film thickness, metal volume fraction and other parameters have been deduced from the modeling. The fitted optical constants were then used to simulate and optimize the Mo-SiO ₂ solar selective coating and samples were prepared based on the optimized parameters. The Maxwell Garnett (MG) and Bruggeman (BR) effective-medium theory have been added in the dielectric function models to describe low metal volume fraction cermet layer (LMVF) and high metal volume fraction cermet layer (HMVF), separately. The optical spectra (R and T) of all single films were in a good agreement with the fitted spectra by dielectric function models. The experimental measured reflectance of the solar selective coating was also in rather good agreement with the optimized result. The solar absorptance of theoretically optimized selective coating was 0.945, while the absorptance of the experimental coating was 0.95. The thermal emittance of 0.15 (at 400°C) was obtained.