Nano Express
Absorption and scattering properties of carbon nanohorn-based nanofluids for direct sunlight absorbers
Author affiliations
1 National Institute of Optics, National Council of Research, Firenze, 50125, Italy
2 Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Firenze, Sesto Fiorentino, 50019, Italy
3 Institute for Energetics and Interphases, National Council of Research, Padova, 35127, Italy
Citation and License
Nanoscale Research Letters 2011, 6:282 doi:10.1186/1556-276X-6-282
Published: 4 April 2011Abstract
In the present work, we investigated the scattering and spectrally resolved absorption properties of nanofluids consisting in aqueous and glycol suspensions of single-wall carbon nanohorns. The characteristics of these nanofluids were evaluated in view of their use as sunlight absorber fluids in a solar device. The observed nanoparticle-induced differences in optical properties appeared promising, leading to a considerably higher sunlight absorption with respect to the pure base fluids. Scattered light was found to be not more than about 5% with respect to the total attenuation of light. Both these effects, together with the possible chemical functionalization of carbon nanohorns, make this new kind of nanofluids very interesting for increasing the overall efficiency of the sunlight exploiting device.
PACS
78.40.Ri, 78.35.+c, 78.67.Bf, 88.40.fh, 88.40.fr, 81.05.U.
