Porous metal-based multilayers for selective thermal emitters

We report the numerical study of a selective thermal emitter based on a metallic multilayered structure consisting of a graded antireflection top layer, a middle layer with uniform porosity (i.e., volume fraction of voids), and a nonporous substrate layer. Simulation results show that the proposed emitters feature an emission edge in near-IR where the emissivity drops from over 0.9 to below 0.1, for both the TE and TM polarizations. Moreover, these desired emission characteristics persist for a wide range of emission angles with the emission edge nearly nonshifted, making the proposed emitters promising for achieving isotropic thermal emission. The designed emitters are particularly attractive for the thermal-photovoltaic applications by suppressing emission below the photovoltaic material bandgap, which is normally in near-IR. © 2012 Optical Society of America.