Structured graphene metamaterial selective absorbers for high efficiency and omnidirectional solar thermal energy conversion

Keng-Te Lin, Han Lin, Tieshan Yang and Baohua Jia ()
Additional contact information
Keng-Te Lin: Swinburne University of Technology
Han Lin: Swinburne University of Technology
Tieshan Yang: Swinburne University of Technology
Baohua Jia: Swinburne University of Technology

Nature Communications, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract An ideal solar-thermal absorber requires efficient selective absorption with a tunable bandwidth, excellent thermal conductivity and stability, and a simple structure for effective solar thermal energy conversion. Despite various solar absorbers having been demonstrated, these conditions are challenging to achieve simultaneously using conventional materials and structures. Here, we propose and demonstrate three-dimensional structured graphene metamaterial (SGM) that takes advantages of wavelength selectivity from metallic trench-like structures and broadband dispersionless nature and excellent thermal conductivity from the ultrathin graphene metamaterial film. The SGM absorbers exhibit superior solar selective and omnidirectional absorption, flexible tunability of wavelength selective absorption, excellent photothermal performance, and high thermal stability. Impressive solar-to-thermal conversion efficiency of 90.1% and solar-to-vapor efficiency of 96.2% have been achieved. These superior properties of the SGM absorber suggest it has a great potential for practical applications of solar thermal energy harvesting and manipulation.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15116-z Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:11:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-15116-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-15116-z

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().