Organic polymer electrolytes attracted a great deal of attention and research in the field of energy conversion and energy storage due to their benefits such as appreciable ionic conductivity and transference number, improved mechanical strength, thermal stability, and better interaction with the electrodes. In this study, a polymer electrolyte was synthesized from poly­(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) by electrospinning technique followed by soaking in a series of deep eutectic solvents (DESs) to enhance the electrical conductivity of the product. The result was a very thin, nonwoven membrane. The produced membranes showed appreciable improvement in electrical conductivity from 2.78 × 10–6 to 2.27 × 10–2 S/cm after soaking in DES2. The observed improvement in electrical properties opens the possibility for the PVA membranes to find their applications in batteries, storage cells, flexible thermoelectric devices, sensors, and solar cells.

The quaternary chalcogenide Cu 2 ZnSnS 4 has emerged as a potential thermoelectric (TE) material due to its low thermal conductivity (κ), high Seebeck coefficient (S) and composition including earth-abundant, low-cost and non-toxic elements. In this work, Cu 2 ZnSnS 4 was synthesised from a mixture of Cu, Zn, Sn and S powders using a mechanical alloying method. As a result, Cu 2 ZnSnS 4 powders were formed after 16 h of milling, without additional heat treatment. After milling, the powders were heat-treated at 723 K for 24 h and then sintered by spark plasma sintering under an applied pressure of 60 MPa at 873 K for 10 min. The heat-treated Cu 2 ZnSnS 4 sample showed a wide-band-gap of 1.49 eV. The sintered Cu 2 ZnSnS 4 sample exhibited S and κ values of 170 μV K −1 and 1.06 W m −1 K −1 , respectively with an electrical conductivity σ of 1240 S m −1 and a dimensionless figure of merit (ZT) of 0.022 at 663 K.

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