Rapid and economic fabrication approach of dielectric reflectors for energy harvesting applications.

Dielectric reflectors are the passive components that have their potential demands for various purposes, such as back-end reflector in solar cells, the band pass filters in optical instruments, thermal reflector and so on. Though well-established techniques for manufacturing such reflectors are available, the demand for their low-cost production with a minimum number of coatings has attracted the attention of the scientific community. In this framework, this paper addresses the process optimization for the low-cost and rapid fabrication of dielectric TiO ₂ /SiO ₂ reflectors with 100% reflectance. Numerous studies are carried out to explore the structural, morphological, and optical characteristics of reflectors. We summarize that the desired reflection band of a selective-wavelength range can be realized by varying the precursor and catalyst concentrations, annealing cycle, and the spin rate. With this, we noticed the shifting of reflection window from the visible (Vis) to near-infrared (NIR) wavelength region using reflectors of merely 2.5 stacks of TiO ₂ /SiO ₂ films. We also performed the thermal response of the reflector by radiating an infrared light source and observed an exceptional performance indicating its thermal shielding application.