Table 1
Software for optical thin film coating simulation and optimization.
| SOFTWARE | COMMERCIAL STATUS | OPEN SOURCE | GUI | REF |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SCOUT/CODE | Commercial | No | Yes | [20] |
| Essential MacLeod | Commercial | No | Yes | [21] |
| FilmStar | Commercial | No | Yes | [22] |
| OpenFilters | Free | Yes | Yes | [18, 23] |
| OpTaliX | Commercial | No | Yes | [18] |
| OptiLayer | Commercial | No | Yes | [24] |
| PhaseCODE | Commercial | No | Yes | [20] |
| PyMoosh | Free | Yes | No | [16, 25, 26] |
| TFCalc | Commercial | No | Yes | [24] |
| TMM-Fast | Free | Yes | No | [17, 27] |
| RP-Coating V4 | Commercial | No | Yes | [28] |
| Solcore | Free | Yes | No | [19] |
Figure 1
SolPOC uses refractive indices selected from peer-reviewed studies, complemented, if necessary, with EMA theory (for composites or porous layers), to create a thin layer stack. The optical properties are calculated with Abélès formalism, using NumPy package for reduced calculation time.
Figure 2
Number of optical properties calculation per second on 445 different wavelengths on both polarizations, for different packages, using cpu.
Figure 3
Computed reflectivity of 20 layers Bragg mirror with different optical Python package.
Figure 4
Computed average reflectivity of Bragg mirror with different optical Python package, for 2 to 50 thin layers.
Figure 5
SolPOC offers a wide range of objective functions suitable for various applications including solar energy, buildings, vision and more. These objective functions can be optimized using various global optimization methods. Thanks to multiprocessing, Consistency Curves are easy to manage to ensure the optimization quality.
Figure 6
Example of SolPOC capabilities for optimizing all coatings utilized in a solar collector in CSP plant: i) reflective coating, ii) antireflective coating and iii) spectrally selective coating.
Table 2
Industrial coating performance values from SAM [59] vs. theoretical examples illustrating SolPOC optimization capabilities.
| SURFACE | INDUSTRIAL SOLAR COMPONENTS | OPTIMIZATION EXAMPLES | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NUMBER OF THIN LAYERS | TYPICAL VALUE | OPTIMIZATION VARIABLES | SOLPOC PERFORMANCE RESULTS | |
| Solar mirror | 1 metallic layer | RS: 0.935 | 11 layers thicknesses | RS: 0.966 |
| Vacuum tube | 1 porous layer | TS: 0.964 | 3 layers thicknesses + 3 porosity rates | TS: 0.994 |
| Thermal absorber | 3 or 4 layers with 1 or 2 cermet(s) | AS: 0.963 E(300°C): 0.08 rH(300°C): 0.953 | 6 layers thicknesses + 3 cermet inclusion rates | AS: 0.975 E(300°C): 0.074 rH(300°C): 0.966 |
Figure 7
Reflectivity or transmissivity spectra for each type of coatings after optimization.
Figure 8
Consistency curves for different optimization processes, using DE optimization method.