META-REFLECTOR (EC H2020)
Project acronym: META-REFLECTOR
Project full title: META-material flexible Optical Solar Reflectors.
Funding: the project is financially supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 program
Area: Space Technologies
- Topic
- Materials for thermal control.
- Objectives
- Development of a new class of flexible Optical Solar Refletors consisting of a metamaterial thermo-optical coating deposited on polymer or metal film.
- Role of CREO
- Project Coordinator and main provider of thin film technology.
- Solution / Technology
- The core of the coating is a plasmonic structure known as Perfect Metamaterial Absorber (PMA) and consisting of a metal back-reflector, a dielectric spacer, and a pattern of nanoantennas made of a Transparent and Conductive Oxide (TCO). The PMA is designed to have strong broadband absorption in the thermal IR, and high reflectance in the rest of the EM spectrum. All the layers are deposited by sputtering, and the TCO is patterned by Nano Imprint Lithography, a technique that is scalable to large area.
TRL: 4
Demonstrators 100 x 100 mm on Kapton film had alpha around 0.2 and epsilon around 0.8 at the begin og life. They passed thermal vacuum cycles and UV (screening tests) with no appreciable alteration of mechanical or thermo-optical properties.
Web site: META-REFLECTOR H2020 Project
