Production of Solar Reflective Materials Using a Laboratory-Scale Roll Coater: Final Subcontract Report, September 30, 2004

This report summarizes work performed by Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) in fulfillment of a contract with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The work described here is a continuation of work performed on an earlier contract (YAR-5-15005-01). The goal of the work has been to demonstrate that it is possible to produce a durable low-cost reflector forsolar-thermal-electric power systems. The core technology is a technique called ion-beam-assisted physical vapor deposition to produce a silvered reflector with a protective alumina coating. In the previous contract, SAIC optimized the coating process for batch coating. In this contract, we transitioned the coating process from batch coating to roll coating. In the course of the contract, wesuccessfully designed and built a laboratory-scale web handling machine; integrated the machine into the existing SAIC coating chamber; and roll-coated material using an alumina deposition rate as high as 20 nm/s. For a set of optimized parameters, the reflective material was highly reflective and well adhered.