Disordered and densely packed ITO nanorods as an excellent lithography-free optical solar reflector metasurface for the radiative cooling of spacecraft

Date

2019

Editor(s)

Advisor

Supervisor

Co-Advisor

Co-Supervisor

Instructor

Source Title

Proceedings of SPIE Vol. 11080, Metamaterials, Metadevices, and Metasystems 2019

Print ISSN

0277-786X

Electronic ISSN

Publisher

SPIE

Volume

11080

Issue

Pages

1 - 10

Language

English

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Series

Abstract

Optical Solar Reflectors (OSRs) form the physical interface between the spacecraft and space and they are essential for the stabilization and uniform distribution of temperature throughout the spacecraft. OSRs need to possess a spectrally selective response of broadband and perfect electromagnetic wave absorption in the thermal-infrared spectral range, while strongly reflecting the solar energy input. In this work, we experimentally show that disordered and densely packed ITO nanorod forests can be used as an excellent top-layer metasurface in a metal-insulator-oxide cavity configuration, and a thermal-emissivity of 0.97 is experimentally realized in the spectral range from 2.5 to 25 μm. The low-loss dielectric response of ITO in the solar spectrum, from 300 nm to 2.5 μm range limited the solar absorptivity to an experimental value of 0.167. These make our proposed design highly promising for its application in space missions due to combining high throughput, robustness, low cost with ultra-high performance.

Course

Other identifiers

Book Title

Degree Discipline

Degree Level

Degree Name

Citation

Published Version (Please cite this version)