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Due to its refractory properties and higher oxidation resistance, iridium (Ir) exhibits great potential for applications such as thermophotovoltaic emitters or contamination sensing. However, the lack of its temperature-dependent optical data prevents accurate modeling of Ir-based optical devices operating at higher temperatures. In this work, refractive indices of as-deposited and annealed Ir films, sputter-deposited, are characterized at between room temperature and 550°C over 300 nm to 15 µm of wavelength. The extinction coefficients of both as-deposited and annealed Ir films tend to decrease as temperature increases, with the exception of as-deposited Ir at 550°C due to significant grain growth. Under 530°C, optical constants of as-deposited Ir are less sensitive to temperature than those of annealed Ir. These characteristics of Ir films are correlated with their microstructural changes. 

Two- or three-dimensionally patterned subwavelength structures, also known as metamaterials, have the advantage of arbitrarily engineerable optical properties. In thermophotovoltaic (TPV) applications, metamaterials are commonly used to optimize the emitter’s radiation spectrum for various source temperatures. The output power of a TPV device is proportional to the photon flux, which is proportional to the emitter size. However, using 2D or 3D metamaterials imposes challenges to realizing large emitters since fabricating their subwavelength features typically involves complicated fabrication processes and is highly time-consuming. In this work, we demonstrate a large-area (78 cm2) thermal emitter. This emitter is simply fabricated with one-dimensional layers of silicon (Si) and chromium (Cr), and therefore, it can be easily scaled up to even larger sizes. The emissivity spectrum of the emitter is measured at 802 K, targeting an emission peak in the mid-infrared. The emissivity peak is ∼0.84 at the wavelength of 3.75 μm with a 1.2 μm bandwidth. Moreover, the emission spectrum of our emitter can be tailored for various source temperatures by changing the Si thickness. Therefore, the results of this work can lead to enabling TPV applications with higher output power and lower fabrication cost.