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Deflectometry is widely used to accurately calculate the slopes of any specular reflective surface, ranging from car bodies to nanometer-level mirrors. This paper presents a new deflectometry technique using binary patterns of increasing frequency to retrieve the surface slopes. Binary Pattern Deflectometry allows almost instant, simple, and accurate slope retrieval, which is required for applications using mobile devices. The paper details the theory of this deflectometry method and the challenges of its implementation. Furthermore, the binary pattern method can also be combined with a classic phase-shifting method to eliminate the need of a complex unwrapping algorithm and retrieve the absolute phase, especially in cases like segmented optics, where spatial algorithms have difficulties. Finally, whether it is used as a stand-alone or combined with phase-shifting, the binary patterns can, within seconds, calculate the slopes of any specular reflective surface.

This paper reports methods developed to maximize the overall reflectance second-surface silvered glass. The reflectance at shorter wavelengths is increased with the aid of a dielectric enhancing layer between the silver and the glass, while at longer wavelengths it is enhanced by use of glass with negligible iron content. The calculated enhancement of reflectance, compared to unenhanced silver on standard low-iron float glass, corresponds to a 4.4% increase in reflectance averaged across the full solar spectrum, appropriate for CSP, and 2.7% for CPV systems using triple junction cells. An experimental reflector incorporating these improvements, of drawn crown glass and a silvered second-surface with dielectric boost, was measured at NREL to have 95.4% solar weighted reflectance. For comparison, non-enhanced, wetsilvered reflectors of the same 4 mm thickness show reflectance ranging from 91.6 - 94.6%, depending on iron content. A potential drawback of using iron-free drawn glass is reduced concentration in high concentration systems because of the inherent surface errors. This effect is largely mitigated for glass shaped by slumping into a concave mold, rather than by bending.