Sputtering Targets for Solar Thermal Systems

When people think about solar power, most of them think about photovoltaic panels. But besides this famous technology - solar thermal and concentrated solar power (CSP) systems offer great prospects for the growing energy demand and gain momentum.

Solar thermal / CSP systems have several advantages over photovoltaics. Compared to common PV systems they work best in hot ambiance. Even more essential is that the energy can easily be stored in the form of heat, which enables energy supply - even several hours after sunset.

To continuously boost the degree of efficiency of solar thermal systems, high performance materials are essential. Advanced PVD coatings are seen as a key element in creating efficiency improvements for solar power generation.

Heraeus as a sputtering target supplier with outstanding technical and materials expertise and decades of experience in reflective, anti-reflective and selective absorber coatings offers custom-tailored materials solutions for the solar thermal market.

Reflective Coatings
for mirrors are used in linear Fresnel collectors, parabolic troughs, parabolic dishes and power towers.

Anti-Reflective Coatings
are applied to the glass surface which contains the absorber, thus the solar transmittance can be maximized.

Selective Absorber Coatings
are the most critical part of solar collectors. To improve the performance of collectors, absorber surfaces should have the highest possible solar absorptance and the lowest possible thermal emittance. The sputtering technique has demonstrated that it is a state of the art production method for high reproducible spectrally selective absorber coatings.