Preparation and characterization of carbon/nickel oxide nanocomposite coatings for solar absorber applications

Nanocomposite materials have wide range of applications in solar energy conversion. In this work, C/NiO nanocomposite solar energy absorbing surfaces were prepared using sol–gel synthesis and deposited on aluminium substrates using a spin coater. The coatings were prepared from alcoholic sols based on Ni-acetate using diethalonamine as a chelating agent and polyethylene glycol (PEG) as organic template. Sucrose was used as a carbon source. Sols with different heating temperature and PEG concentrations were fabricated. Thermal analysis on the gel revealed that the xerogels weight loss stabilized at around 430 °C. It was found that the absorption edge shifts to the higher wavelength with an increase in the heating temperature in the temperature range studied, 300–550 °C, due to an increase in carbon content in the material. The main features of Raman spectra obtained from the composite films are the D and G bands, characteristic of graphitic carbon films. The G peak width narrowed while the ratio of the integrated intensities of the D and G peaks, ID/IG, increased with the heating temperature, suggesting a progressive increase of the graphitic domain within the films. The solar absorption property of the films was enhanced with the increase of PEG concentrations in the sols from 0 to 2 g and decreases with further increase of PEG. The best solar absorption, αsol, and the surface thermal emittance, ɛtherm, at 100 °C obtained were 85% and 5% for a single layer, respectively, yielding an optical selectivity S = αsol/ɛtherm of 17.1.