Feasibility study study of a new solar greenhouse covering material

In high temperature and scorching area during summer, solar greenhouse has solved the problem of greenhouse cooling and energy utilization. However, there are many deficiencies in the solar greenhouse covering material at present, such as the problems of low visible light transmittance for plant photo-synthesis and low near-infrared reflectance causes warming. For this reason, we present a solar covering material composed of indium tin oxide and metal materials in this paper. Its optical properties in visible and near infrared are numerically simulated by finite-difference time-domain method. We examine the influence of structural parameters on optical response of the micro-nano photonic structure and find that (ITO/Ag)(ITO)-I-4 structure has a transmittance of more than 95% under visible light, while the near-infrared reflectance is above 90%. Numerical results demonstrate that this structure enable potential applications in solar covering material. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.