This PDF file contains the front matter associated with SPIE Proceedings Volume 8469, including the Title Page, Copyright information, Table of Contents, Introduction, and Conference Committee listing.

The design of a new high-temperature, solar-based reactor for thermochemical production of syngas using water and carbon dioxide will be discussed. The reactor incorporates the use of high-temperature heat pipe(s) that efficiently transfer the heat from a solar collector to a porous metal oxide material. Special attention is given to the thermal characteristics of the reactor, which are key factors affecting the overall system efficiency and amount of fuel produced. The thermochemical cycle that is considered is that for ceria based material. Preliminary data acquired from an early stage reactor, operated at temperatures up to 1100^oC, is presented and efforts are now underway to increase the operating temperature of the reactor to 1300^oC to further increase the efficiency of the thermochemical fuel production process.

The present work considers engineering of the flat band potential, FBP, of metal oxides in a controlled manner. The aim is to minimise the energy losses related to recombination. The related experimental approaches include imposition of a chemically-induced electric field using the phenomena of segregation, diffusion and the formation of multilayer systems. This paper considers several basic phenomena that allow the modification of the surface charge and the space charge at the gas/solid and solid/liquid interfaces.

In this paper, we present the effect of (S-M) (M= transition metal) co-doping on the electronic structure of TiO2. Density functional theory (DFT) is used to study the optoelectronic properties and bandgap energy of anatase TiO2 under codoping of sulfur and transition metal. Substitution of titanium atoms with transition metal and oxygen atoms with sulfur shows band gap reduction and formation of continues band structure which avoids trapping of photo generated electrons and holes. The effects of dopant positions and concentrations are studied here and bandgap reduction is observed.