A solar-selective functional multi-layered coating for high temperature applications has been developed on copper and stainless steel substrates using an industrially viable cathodic arc physical vapor deposition technique. The selective coating was formulated in such a way that the constituent functional layers are mainly high temperature stable nitride materials which are also hard and capable of imparting protection against wear. A multi-layer structure comprising TiAlCrN as IR reflector, TiAlN as absorber and AlSiN as anti-reflective layer was found to exhibit promising results. The stacking of these three materials with appropriate thickness in a systematic manner, viz. Cu/TiAlCrN/TiAlN/AlSiN with high Cr and Al contents in TiAlCrN and TiAlN layers, respectively, yielded high absorptivity (alpha(AM1.5)=0.91) and low emissivity (epsilon=0.07) values corresponding to an attractive optical selectivity (alpha/epsilon) of 13. The open air high temperature performance of the optimized multi-layer structure was also investigated in the temperature range 27-700 degrees C and the stability of the coatings at high temperatures with respect to optical properties was established. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.