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Guler, Urcan
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Roadmap on plasmonics
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High temperature efficient, stable Si wafer-based selective solar absorbers
Creating selective solar absorber systems using simple, stable structures capable of surviving high temperatures is essential for widespread adoption of efficient, high-temperature solar thermal technologies. In this study, semiconductor-metal tandem selective solar absorbers based on commercially available Si wafers are fabricated and measured at different high temperatures. High selectivity of the devices is obtained at temperature as high as 490 °C, and the structure is demonstrated to be mechanically and thermally stable even at slightly higher temperatures (up to 535 °C). Increased free carrier absorption and lattice absorption of Si are observed at elevated temperatures, which raise thermal re-radiation dramatically. In order to mitigate this effect, a thin Si film-based selective absorber has also been computationally designed and optimized, which is predicted to exhibit even higher thermal transfer efficiency (60–70%) at a wide range of solar concentrations (20–100 suns). In conclusion, the simple structure combined with the mechanical and thermal stability enables the low-cost Si substrate-based selective solar absorber to find wide applications in solar thermal energy conversion systems.
Electron energy loss spectroscopy of plasmon resonances in titanium nitride thin films
The plasmon resonance characteristics of refractory TiN thin films were analyzed using electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS). A bulk plasmon resonance was observed at 2.81 eV and a weaker surface plasmon resonance peak was detected at 2.05 eV. These findings are compared to finite-difference time-domain simulations based on measured optical data. The calculated values for both the bulk and surface resonances (2.74 eV and 2.15 eV, respectively) show reasonable agreement with those measured via EELS. The amplitude of the experimentally observed surface resonance was weaker than that typically encountered in noble metal nanostructures, and this is discussed in the context of electron density and reduced spatial confinement of the resonance mode in the thin-film geometry.