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Solar Cells

- A Story of Solar Cells

Solar cells are devices that convert the energy of sunlight directly into electricity by the photovoltaic effect. Solar cell is reserved for devices intended specifically to capture energy from sunlight such as solar panels and solar cells, while the term photovoltaic cell is used when the light source is unspecified.

The Origin of Solar Cells

Solar cells use photovoltaic effect theory to generate electric power. The term "photovoltaic" comes from the Greek, meaning light and voltaic, meaning electric, from the name of the Italian physicist Volta. The term photo-voltaic has been in use in English since 1849. The first solar cells were built in 1883, by Charles Fritts, who coated the semiconductor selenium with an extremely thin layer of gold to form the junctions. The device was only around 1% efficient. Later, many scientists dedicated in the study of solar cell, including Aleksandr Stoletov, Albert Einstein. Russell Ohl designed the modern solar cells in 1946.

How Do Solar Cells work

Solar cells with 1% efficient can’t supply consumption, so we need high- efficiency cells. How to raise solar cells efficiency？ The main strategies to gain photovoltaic electricity are increasing the efficiency of the cells and decreasing their cost per unit area. However, increasing the efficiency of a solar cell without decreasing the total cost per kilowatt-hour is not more economical, since sunlight is free. The challenge of increasing the photovoltaic efficiency is thus of great interest, both from the academic and economic points of view. Many people believe the possibility of high efficiencies after conducting optical measurements under many hypothetical conditions. The efficiency of solar cells should be proved through series experiment. Today, high- efficiency solar cells are invented continually and applied in industrial, commercial and household, etc. The cells really help us raise the quality of life.