Abstract Solar thermal energy is one of the ways of using solar radiation that can be applied to meet the energy needs for heating. To achieve efficient photothermal conversion, selective surfaces are applied to solar collectors to absorb more radiation and minimize heat loss. The present work produced absorber surfaces from black chromium electrodeposition on stainless steel substrate, the main parameter evaluated was the deposition time and its effect on optical and morphological properties. In this sense, the techniques of characterization UV-Vis-NIR Spectroscopy, Infrared Spectroscopy, X-Ray Diffraction, Optical Profilometry and Thermogravimetric analysis were used. It was observed a great influence of the electrodeposition time in the absorptance of the films, where films with deposition times of 2 to 10 minutes obtained absorptances greater than 92%. The metallic Cr phase was identified in the films, and it is estimated that chromium oxides may have been formed in the amorphous form. With increasing time, the roughness oscillated due to the constant nucleation of chromium throughout the process. Furthermore, a 5% mass loss indicates good thermal stability of the film up to 400 °C.

Selective surfaces have the function of absorbing strongly the sunlight, while ideally losing little heat to the environment via convection and radiation. The present study sought to obtain a selective surface of black chromium coated with an antireflective (AR) layer based on sugarcane bagasse ash using copper as a substrate. From this selective surface the electrodeposition parameters (time, working distance, voltage) as well as the surface behavior were analyzed in order to determine if the AR layer provided an increase in the absorption levels of the film. By means of the present study it was possible to conclude that, in terms of the electrodeposition parameters evaluated, the anode-cathode distance of 5 cm stimulated the obtaining of higher levels of absorption. The addition of the antireflective layer on the black chromium films favored the increase of the absortance average in all the adopted parameter sets, besides reducing the standard deviation around the average. As for the microstructure of the obtained films, the increase of the parameter Ra promoted the increase of the absorption, due to the formation of optical traps.

The search for the reduction of costs for the implementation of renewable energies implies in the optimization of the parameters of the manufacturing processes of consolidated technologies. Among these technologies are the solar collectors composed of absorber films characterized by high absorption in the spectrum range corresponding to solar radiation and low emittance in the infrared range, allowing an increase in the collector's operating temperature (300 to 700°C). The present work produced selective surfaces based on black chrome absorber films on stainless steel substrate by electrodeposition. The substrates were immersed in a chromium trioxide bath with hexafluorosilicic acid using a Pb-Sn electrode. In the project some parameters of deposition were evaluated (time, distance and voltage) and their influence on the surface roughness of the coatings obtained by correlating them with the absorptions of the produced surfaces. For this, the surfaces produced were characterized by UV-Vis-NIR, profilometry and SEM. The results indicate that the working distance directly influenced the increase of the films absorption and that the influence of the surface roughness on the film absorption is related to the electrodeposition time as the voltage is raised.