Zinc oxide aluminum doped slabs for heat-eliminating coatings of spacecrafts

Abstract This paper discuss a possibility for using a thin-film functional coating based on transparent conducting thin films of aluminum doped zinc oxide ( AZO ) as a heat-eliminating material on the surface of a spacecraft. The structure of the functional coating has been chosen taking into account the plasmonic properties of AZO and silver and represents the AZO slabs with embedded silver nanoparticles deposited on AZO layer and AZO slabs with embedded silver nanoparticles deposited on thin film fused quartz layer. The paper contains COMSOL finite element simulations of the scattering cross section for thermal radiation in the IR band in the case the investigated coating deposited on a reflective aluminum film, and absorption cross section in the near UV and visible spectral bands when the coating deposited on silicon solar panels. The calculations demonstrate an increase in the scattering cross-section in the spectral band of blackbody radiation by several orders of magnitude, with the maximum in the scattering spectrum of the AZO slabs/ AZO /Al structure corresponding to the maximum intensity of the blackbody thermal radiation, which has been heated to 100 °C in the case the lattice period of the AZO slabs is equal to the resonance wavelength for AZO . Also an increase in the absorption cross-section of AZO slabs/ AZO /Si structure in visible spectral band is observed corresponding to plasmon absorption of embedded silver nanoparticles.