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The first demonstration of the photovoltaic effect, by Edmond Becquerel in 1839, used an electrochemical cell. He explained his discovery in Comptes rendus de l'Académie des sciences, "the production of an electric current when two plates of platinum or gold immersed in an acid, neutral, or alkaline solution are exposed in an uneven way to solar radiation."
Cadmium telluride PV is the only thin film technology with lower costs than conventional solar cells made of crystalline silicon in multi-kilowatt systems. [1] [2] [3] On a lifecycle basis, CdTe PV has the smallest carbon footprint, lowest water use and shortest energy payback time of any current photovoltaic technology.
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.
Other possible solar cell types are organic solar cells, dye sensitized solar cells, perovskite solar cells, quantum dot solar cells etc. The illuminated side of a solar cell generally has a transparent conducting film for allowing light to enter into the active material and to collect the generated charge carriers.
Portable solar chargers are used to charge cell phones and other small electronic devices on the go. Chargers on the market today use various types of solar panels, ranging from thin film panels with efficiencies from 7-15% (amorphous silicon around 7%, CIGS closer to 15%), to the slightly more efficient monocrystalline panels which offer efficiencies up to 18%.
The mostly commonly researched modern photoelectrochemical cell in recent decades has been the Grätzel cell, although much attention has recently shifted away from this topic to perovskite solar cells, due to relatively high efficiency of the latter and the similarity in vapor assisted deposition techniques commonly used in their creation.
A PV solar-powered pump system has three main parts - one or more solar panels, a controller, and a pump.The solar panels make up most (up to 80%) of the system's cost. [citation needed] The size of the PV system is directly dependent on the size of the pump, the amount of water that is required, and the solar irradiance available.
In applications such as solar cells, surface recombination may be the dominant mechanism of recombination due to the collection and extraction of free carriers at the surface. In some applications of solar cells, a layer of transparent material with a large band gap, also known as a window layer, is used to minimize surface recombination.