Optical and Chromaticity Properties of Metal-Dielectric Composite-Based Multilayer Thin-Film Structures Prepared by RF Magnetron Sputtering

Abstract

Coated glass products, and especially the low-emissivity coatings, have become a common building material used in modern architectural projects. More recently, these material systems became common in specialized glazing systems featuring solar energy harvesting. Apart from achieving the stability of optical parameters in multilayer coatings, it is also important to have improved control over the design of visual color properties of the coated glass. We prepare metal-dielectric composite (MDC)-based multilayer thin-film structures using the radio frequency (RF)-magnetron sputtering deposition and report on their optical and chromaticity properties in comparison with these obtained using pure metal-based Dielectric/Metal/Dielectric (DMD) trilayer structures of similar compositions. Experimentally achieved Hunter L, a, b values of MDC-based multilayer building blocks of coatings provide a new outlook on the engineering of future-generation optical coatings with better color consistency and developing approaches to broaden the range of achievable color coordinates and better environmental stability.Low-E coatings can still be expected to represent core technology in advanced windows, whether or not additional technologies are embedded. The Low-E coatings are typically structured as metal-dielectric multilayer thin films, which are designed to prevent heat leakage (from the inside of buildings into the environment) by providing strong and very wide-band reflection of thermal infrared wavelengths.In recent years, the optical properties of metal-dielectric coatings and their influence on building energy efficiency have been studied extensively due to their superior performance compared to other multilayer coating structure types. The metal-dielectric coatings performance mainly depends on the choice of materials and its design philosophy [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. Most (or practically all) products available today from this category (featuring high spectral selectivity) employ at least two silver (Ag) layers within their structure, and these coatings cannot withstand prolonged (weeks-scale) exposure to either the ambient atmospheric air or dry-heat test temperatures in excess of 160-180 • C. However, the stability problems of ultrathin Ag layers (normally of less than 20 nm thickness) originate from a range of factors related to the metal layer growth morphology. To overcome these issues, a significant number of research works have been proposed, conducted, and resulted in reporting various solutions, where some of them require more complex materials processing and process parameters optimization [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19]. Several reports have been published about the properties of various metal-dielectric composite (MDC) thin-film layer chemistries, including Ag + SiO 2 , Ag + TiO 2 , and Ag + MgF 2 ; however, most of them were about metal-dielectric nanoparticle array properties of interest for various applications [20][21][22][23]. We previously proposed and partially implemented the developmen...

Titanium Nitride Thin Film Based Low-Redox-Interference Potentiometric pH Sensing Electrodes

“…The accuracy of measured L values to the simulated values was between 0.07–0.1% as indicated by the grey colored film. However, the measured a and b values for both samples were found to be positive, and that agreed with the simulated values indicating a red and yellow color, respectively, and thus confirmed the gold color of the TiN film [ 31 ].…”

“…The chromaticity values of the gold TiN thin film were characterized based on the Hunter L , a , b color scale. The explanation of the Hunter Lab color space is presented in references [ 31 , 32 ]. The L value represents the black and white color depending on the values (0–100), and a and b values represent red to green and yellow to blue, respectively.…”

Combinational Approach of Energy Management for Sustainable Food and Crop Storage Facilities: A Research Concept

“…The low-E coatings are typically structured as dielectric/metal/dielectric (DMD) multilayer thin films deposited by various methods, promotes the strong and very wide-band reflection of thermal infrared wavelengths. Recently energy harvesting PV glass windows (contain thin-film coating) capable of on-site energy generation simultaneous with the functionality of tailoring the incident sunlight spectrum required for different crops that improve production yields, can be useful for the design and building of innovative and cost-effective greenhouses for horticultural industries [29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44].…”

Physical Vapor Deposited Silver (AG) Based Metal-Dielectric Nanocomposites for Advanced Thin-Film and Coating Applications

“…Persuasively, in this nanotechnological century, these issues are now an important subject matter for the studies intended to design, develop, and establish the optimized growth processes for ultra-thin, and comparatively smoother layers of nanocompositetype metallic materials (on arbitrary substrate sublayer types) to overcome the problems related to ultra-thin layer materials growth. The motivation to solve the physical and structural issues related to ultrathin metal layer originates from our very recently published article [21], where the possible effects of metal dilution importing dielectric substance on their physical and apparent visual aesthetics were explained. However, in this work, we propose to develop a new nanocomposite-type thin-film material (Ag+ SiC) that can be found suitable for broadening the application range of advanced thin-film materials in ultra-stable coating design options with better control over their properties.…”