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It is possible to build a solar cell identical to a radio, a system known as an optical rectenna, but to date these have not been practical. The majority of the solar electric market is made up of silicon-based devices. In silicon cells, the silicon acts as both the antenna (or electron donor, technically) as well as the electron valve. Silicon ...
By far, the most prevalent bulk material for solar cells is crystalline silicon (c-Si), also known as "solar grade silicon". [70] Bulk silicon is separated into multiple categories according to crystallinity and crystal size in the resulting ingot, ribbon or wafer. These cells are entirely based around the concept of a p–n junction.
In a typical solar cell, the photovoltaic effect is used to generate electricity from sunlight. The light-absorbing or "active layer" of the solar cell is typically a semiconducting material, meaning that there is a gap in its energy spectrum between the valence band of localized electrons around host ions and the conduction band of higher-energy electrons which are free to move throughout the ...
A solar cell (also called photovoltaic cell or photoelectric cell) is a solid state electrical device that converts the energy of light directly into electricity by the photovoltaic effect, which is a physical and chemical phenomenon. It is a form of photoelectric cell, defined as a device whose electrical characteristics, such as current ...
In the case of solar cells at standard temperature and pressure, this loss accounts for about 7% of the power. The second is an effect known as "recombination", where the electrons created by the photoelectric effect meet the electron holes left behind by previous excitations. In silicon, this accounts for another 10% of the power.
For most crystalline silicon solar cells the change in V OC with temperature is about −0.50%/°C, though the rate for the highest-efficiency crystalline silicon cells is around −0.35%/°C. By way of comparison, the rate for amorphous silicon solar cells is −0.20 to −0.30%/°C, depending on how the cell is made.
Crystalline silicon wafers used in solar cells typically have a thickness between 130 and 180 μm. The mass of consumed silicon wafer comprises a significant proportion of the cost of the solar module, and as such reducing the wafer thickness has potential to achieve significant cost reduction. [ 45 ]
Solar panels are often coated with an anti-reflective coating, which is one or more thin layers of substances with refractive indices intermediate between that of silicon and that of air. This causes destructive interference in the reflected light, diminishing the amount.
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