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AlCrO protected textured stainless steel surface for high temperature solar selective absorber applications

The diffusion of substrate material into absorbing layer and oxidation of metal substrate or cermet metal nanoparticles at high temperatures are known as inevitable problems of the solar selective absorbers. In this study, we consider the use of textured stainless steel (SS) surface coated with a protective AlCr oxide layer as a high temperature solar selective absorber. The textured SS surface was prepared by ion etching techniques and AlCr oxide protective layer was deposited by RF magnetron sputtering. The absorptivity and emissivity of the as-prepared absorbers were 0.86-0.92 and 0.151-0.168, respectively. In order to evaluate the thermal stability, the absorbers were annealed at 600-800 C for different time in ambient atmosphere. Absorbers demonstrated a red shift of the onset of the reflectivity at all annealing temperatures. The high activation energy of 315 kJ/mol was calculated. The service lifetime of the absorbers at 500 C was estimated to be about 100 years and at 700 and 800 C the absorbers were stable about 50 and 1 hours, respectively. A detailed examination of the annealed absorber surface revealed growth of surface Mn3O4 nanocrystals, which resulted in observed change of the reflectance spectra, while the textured surface morphology had no significant change. The results show that the protective textured surface has much higher thermal stability in air than iron based cermet absorbers.