Optical and morphological investigation of aluminium and nickel oxide composite films deposited by spray pyrolysis method as a basis of solar thermal absorber

Applications of alumina and nickel oxide in various fields specially in solar energy conversion technology encouraged us to study physical properties of such materials. Hence after the deposition of the thin films on glass substrate by spray pyrolysis, using X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and UV–visible spectrophotometry, various physical properties were investigated. Different optical quantities such as optical band gap, refractive index, extinction coefficient, dielectric constants, volume and surface energy loss functions and optical conductivity were determined. Within this paper for different nickel to aluminium ratio (from 20/80 to 80/20 ratio) at specific substrate temperatures (300°C), decrease of optical transmittance with nickel content was notable. Using the transmittance data, other optical quantities were achieved by a numerical approximation method. We also observed an increase in the volume energy loss (VELF) more than the surface energy loss (SELF) and simultaneously a decrease trend prevailed according to nickel amount. On the basic of the XRD results, the amorphous phase changed by the presence of more nickel and according to SEM, more obvious nanosized spherical grains at higher nickel ratios can be observed.