Science Daily February 21, 2023
Most disordered organic polymers are almost incapable of limiting the absorption in the desired cutoff wavelength range, which is detrimental to the design of selective absorbers. An international team of researchers (China, Singapore) reports a scalable selective absorber with a quasiperiodic nanostructure composed by an economical widespread surface self-assembly of densely arranged Fe3O4 nanoparticles, possessing a high-performance energy conversion for low-grade solar energy. By investigating the scale effect of the quasiperiodic densely arranged plasmonic nanostructure, a significant solar absorption >94% and ideal passive suppression of thermal emissivity <0.2 could be obtained simultaneously. With the synergy of material properties, thermal management, and environmental effect, a flexible planar solar thermoelectric harvester was demonstrated under natural sunlight (AM1.5G), reaching a significant sustaining open-circuit voltage of >20 mV/cm2, without a heat sink. According to the researchers their strategy is expected to lead the exploration of energy evolution in fundamental research and pioneer next-generation, high-performance, economical, and practical solar co-harvesting systems… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLEÂ
Solar-thermal conversion performances of the selective absorber… Credit: APL Photonics 8, 020801 (2023)