Solar cells are designed to convert the powerful light into electrical energy

History


The development of the solar cell started from the work of the French physicist Mr.Antoine-César Becquerel in 1839. Becquerel discovered the photovoltaic effect when experimenting with a solid electrode in an electrolyte solution; he could observe that voltage developed when light falls on the electrode. After about 50 years later, Charles Fritts could construct his first solar cells using junctions that was formed by coating the semiconductor selenium with an Ultrathin - transparent layer of gold. Fritts's devices were not that much efficient, only transforming less than 1 percent of the absorbed light into electrical energy.

In 1927 one of another metal-semiconductors:- junction solar cell, in this case it is made of copper and semiconductor copper oxide, which had been demonstrated. By 1930s both the selenium cell and copper oxide cell were used in light-sensitive devices, such as photometers which if for using in photography. However, these early solar cells, still had energy-conversion efficiency not more than 1 percent. Luckily this confusion was finally could be overcome with the development of silicon-solar-cell by Mr. Russell Ohl which is in 1941. In 1954, three other great U.S researchers, G.L. Pearson, Daryl Chapin, and Calvin Fuller, convinced a silicon solar cell which was capable of a 6 percent energy-conversion efficiency after using in direct sunlight. By the late 1980's - silicon made cells, and those made of gallium arsenide, with efficiencies of more than 20 percent had been produced. In 1989 a concentrator solar cell- type of device in which sunlight is concentrated onto the cell surface by using lenses, could achieve a great efficiency of 37 percent due to the increasing intensity of the collected energy. Nowadays different solar cells of higher efficiencies and cost are now available.