LAUSR

Abstract Rational design and exploration of high infrared radiation materials with remarkable emissivity at high temperatures are always challengeable. In the work, the spinel copper ferrite products with exceptional infrared radiation performance in the wavenumber range of 3–5 μm are massively fabricated through a simple two-step strategy including hydrothermal treatment and low temperature calcination process. Detailed physicochemical characterizations demonstrate that specific structures, compositions, optical behaviors and infrared radiant properties of resultant CuFe2O4 samples are enormously dependent upon the involved hydrothermal temperatures/time and annealing temperatures. The synthetic parameters were optimized as hydrothermal process at 150 °C for 16 h and subsequent calcination at 800 °C. The desirable crystallinity, hetero-composition and lower band gap energy synergistically endow the optimal CuFe2O4 sample with super high infrared radiation emissivity of ~0.913 evaluated at the testing temperature of 800 °C. Our contribution here will provide significant guidance for scalably low-temperature synthesis of high infrared radiation materials with superb emissivity at high temperatures.