In the present work, a solar selective coating of ZrB2/Al2O3 was deposited onto stainless steel (SS) substrates using a magnetron sputtering system. The coating exhibited an good selective absorbing properties with an absorptance of 0.92 and an emittance of 0.11. To investigate the thermal stability of the coating, the samples were annealed at 500 degrees C and 600 degrees C for 100 h, respectively. Experimental results indicated that the coating was thermally stable at 500 degrees C. The structure and optical properties of the coating is also characterized using ultra-high resolution scanning electron microscope, UV-vis-NIR spectrophotometer, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The reflectance spectra of the SS/ZrB2/Al2O3 coating was successfully simulated by CODE software.