Abstract:A novel solar cell technology was proposed to harvest the photon energy and thermal energy simultaneously. The theoretical conversion efficiency of photonenhanced thermionic emission can exceed 50%.The performance of NaCsSb vacuum photodiode under the conditions that combines illumination and heating was explored on the basis of photonenhanced thermionic emission transform mechanism in this paper. The currentvoltage characteristic curve and the powervoltage curve were measured under different wavelengths and temperatures. The conversion efficiency of the NaCsSb vacuum photodiode was calculated. The experimental results show that the power produced under the combined conditions were higher than that obtained only under illumination. When NaCsSb vacuum photodiode is under the same illumination, the conversion efficiency under heating is greater.