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Solar absorber is the key component to realize efficient utilization of solar energy. In this paper, only titanium nitride (TiN) is used to create a broadband, wide-angle, polarization insensitivity solar absorber. The average absorption of the absorber in the spectral range of 300-2500 nm is 91.3%. The distributions of electric and magnetic fields indicate that the strong absorption is caused by the coupling effect of surface plasmon resonance and guided mode resonance. Investigate the effects of the geometric parameters of the absorber on the spectral absorption performance. Moreover, we also discuss the absorption performance of the solar absorber at different incidence angles. It is demonstrated that even at a large incidence angle of 60°, the average spectral absorption can exceed more than 70%. The proposed solar energy absorber is also insensitive to polarization. The research results in this work could benefit the applications in solar thermophotovoltaic system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The triangular pyramid nanostructure (TPN) raises a perfect prerequisite for the aggregation of surface plasmon resonances (SPRs). However, the application of TPN in thermoplasmonics has not yet been developed. The aim of this study is to explore the development potential of TPNs for enhanced noble metal photothermal applications. We investigated the optical absorption properties, photothermal conversion efficiency, and photothermal response under continuous wave irradiation of TPNs based on Ag and Au nanomaterials. The results show that TPN helps to enhance the SPR excitation of Ag and Au in the near-infrared. TPN based on noble metal nanomaterials shows good light absorption capacity and photothermal response. The photothermal conversion efficiencies of the TPN nanoparticle suspensions increased by 56.95% (Ag) and 49.57% (Au), respectively, compared to the same volume of noble metal nanospheres. This work is intended to researchers better understand the development potential of TPN in thermoplasmonics applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

MXene has received a lot of attention from researchers in the fields of photothermal and photovoltaic due to its excellent optical properties. However, research on MXene-based solar absorbers has rarely been carried out. In this work, we proposed a MXene-based solar absorber with absorption broadband, wide-angle, and polarization insensitive. The absorber has excellent light capture capability, with its average absorption in the solar band as high as 97.8 % and an energy absorption ratio of 98.9 % in the AM1.5 solar radiation spectrum. The electric and magnetic field distributions indicate that the unique hierarchical nanohole design can effectively excite multiple resonance couplings of surface plasmon resonance, cavity resonance, and guided mode resonance. The proposed absorber can still maintain the broadband absorption characteristics within a certain manufacturing tolerances. Moreover, the absorber is insensitive to polarization and has a high light absorption under a large incident angle. We believe that this work holds great promise for solar thermal conversion and heat utilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Novel nanofluids (NFs) based on bio-nanotechnology have enormous potential for solar thermal utilization. The biomimetic nanoparticles (NPs) nanostructures provide new ideas for the design of solar collector medium. Inspired by the biological properties of waxberry, we proposed waxberry-shaped biomimetic nanoparticles (WSBNPs) for solar thermal conversion in this work. Numerical results show TiN WSBNPs exhibit good optical absorption properties compared to Ag- and Au-based WSBNPs. When the volume fraction f v = 5 × 10−6 and the depth h = 15 mm, the photothermal conversion efficiency η abs can reach 93.9%. The mechanistic analysis shows that the high absorption performance of WSBNPs can be attributed to the presence of the "lightning rod" effect on the surface of NPs and the mutual coupling of surface plasmon resonance. The η abs of TiN WSBNPs can reach 90% at a lower penetration h = 11 mm and f v = 5 × 10−6. Meanwhile, the η abs of WSBNPs is proportional to the number of protrusions on the exterior surface. It has been shown that TiN WSBNPs with a raised exterior surface have excellent potential for efficient solar energy utilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]