In order to make use of the waste heat caused by the unabsorbed light based on photovoltaic(PV) effect, a novel hybrid dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC) with the synergies of PV and thermoelectric(TE) effect has been proposed in present work. The main idea is to prepare a composite hybrid DSSC photoanode which can simultaneously achieve PV and TE conversion by incorporating the excellent TE Bi-Te alloys into TiO2 nanomaterial. In this paper, Bi2Te3 nanoplates with different size were doped in the TiO2 nanoparticle photoanode and the effect of the Bi2Te3 size on the properties of DSSCs was analyzed. It is found that with the decrease of the size of the Bi2Te3 nanoplates, the TE performance became better and the dye absorption and the conversion efficiency of DSSCs were improved. Preliminary results show that the efficiency of DSSC with Bi2Te3 increased atleast 15.3% compared to the undoped. By further optimizing the parameters, the performance of DSSC is estimated to have a much more enhancement. Therefore, the way of combination PV and TE provides an alternative way to improve the performance of DSSC.

For structural investigation, highly (112) oriented tetragonal Cu2ZnSnS4 (CZTS) thin films on hexagonal sapphire (0001) single crystal substrates were obtained by radio frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering. The influences of the deposition parameters, such as substrate temperature (Tsub) and working Ar pressure (PAr) on the chemical composition and structural properties of as deposited CZTS films were investigated. The film sputtered at 500°C has the only orientation of (112), also, it bears the best structural quality with pure CZTS phase and an estimated band gap of 1.51eV.

Water-splitting by using electric power produced by solar cells is promising system to produce hydrogen without fossil fuels. Oxygen evolving catalyst is, however, major problem to prevent using this system widely because precious materials are used in the catalyst. Considering from the photosynthesis II of plants, the compound of Ca-Mn-O is one of the candidates for the oxygen evolving catalyst. In this study, the synthesis condition and the oxygen evolving electrocatalytic activity of CaMn2O4•xH2O are investigated. The overpotential at 0.1 mA/cm2 was 0.28 V when using the electrode of carbon paste and CaMn2O4•H2O with the weight ratio of 3:1.

Electrochemical reduction of CO2 into useful organics combined with photovoltaics is thought to be one of the promising ways to effectively store and transport the solar energy. In most of the previous researches, CO2 bubbling in different solutions were used as the electrolyte. However, the effects of the electrolyte and the CO2 bubbling are not clear. Therefore, in this research, the effects of different electrolyte, CO2 bubbling, concentration of the electrolyte and temperature on the electrochemical reduction of CO2 on a Cu working electrode were studied. The results showed that the form of the carbon source in the electrolyte, such as HCO3-, CO32- and H2CO3, had a strong effect on this reaction, which was controlled by the pH of the electrolyte. Furthermore, high concentration of the HCO3- and elevated temperature can strongly improve the reaction current density.