Particulate nature of solar absorbing films: Gold black

Abstract

The structure and composition of a test solar black, gold black, has been investigated in order to more fully understand the particulate nature of good solar‐energy absorbers. Inert‐gas‐evaporated gold‐black films showed significant dependence of film‐particle size on inert‐gas pressure and of particle‐packing fraction on pressure. The distribution of particle sizes in the films has been noted to be log–normal with median particle sizes ranging from 50 to 100 Å over the pressure range of 1 to 10 Torr (133–1330 Pa).