41 Facts About Solar cells

Solar cells cell, or photovoltaic cell, is an electronic device that converts the energy of light directly into electricity by the photovoltaic effect, which is a physical and chemical phenomenon.

Solar cells are described as being photovoltaic, irrespective of whether the source is sunlight or an artificial light.

Solar cells are usually connected in series creating additive voltage.

Solar cells were first used in a prominent application when they were proposed and flown on the Vanguard satellite in 1958, as an alternative power source to the primary battery power source.

Terrestrial solar cell technology generally uses photovoltaic cells that are laminated with a layer of glass for strength and protection.

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Space applications for solar cells require that the cells and arrays are both highly efficient and extremely lightweight.

Some newer technology implemented on satellites are multi-junction photovoltaic Solar cells, which are composed of different PN junctions with varying bandgaps in order to utilize a wider spectrum of the sun's energy.

Solar cells could be made using cast-off material from the electronics market.

Solar cells PV is growing fastest in Asia, with China and Japan currently accounting for half of worldwide deployment.

Solar cells cell has a voltage dependent efficiency curve, temperature coefficients, and allowable shadow angles.

Solar cells moved the front contacts to the rear of the panel, eliminating shaded areas.

Some Solar cells are designed to handle sunlight that reaches the Earth's surface, while others are optimized for use in space.

Solar cells can be made of a single layer of light-absorbing material or use multiple physical configurations to take advantage of various absorption and charge separation mechanisms.

Solar cells can be classified into first, second and third generation cells.

The first generation Solar cells— called conventional, traditional or wafer-based Solar cells—are made of crystalline silicon, the commercially predominant PV technology, that includes materials such as polysilicon and monocrystalline silicon.

Second generation cells are thin film solar cells, that include amorphous silicon, CdTe and CIGS cells and are commercially significant in utility-scale photovoltaic power stations, building integrated photovoltaics or in small stand-alone power system.

The third generation of solar cells includes a number of thin-film technologies often described as emerging photovoltaics—most of them have not yet been commercially applied and are still in the research or development phase.

The corners of the Solar cells look clipped, like an octagon, because the wafer material is cut from cylindrical ingots, that are typically grown by the Czochralski process.

Solar cells made with this "kerfless" technique can have efficiencies approaching those of wafer-cut cells, but at appreciably lower cost if the CVD can be done at atmospheric pressure in a high-throughput inline process.

In June 2015, it was reported that heterojunction solar cells grown epitaxially on n-type monocrystalline silicon wafers had reached an efficiency of 22.

Polycrystalline silicon, or multicrystalline silicon Solar cells are made from cast square ingots—large blocks of molten silicon carefully cooled and solidified.

Polysilicon Solar cells are the most common type used in photovoltaics and are less expensive, but less efficient, than those made from monocrystalline silicon.

Silicon thin-film Solar cells are mainly deposited by chemical vapor deposition from silane gas and hydrogen gas.

The production of a-Si thin film solar cells uses glass as a substrate and deposits a very thin layer of silicon by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition .

GaAs is more commonly used in multijunction photovoltaic cells for concentrated photovoltaics and for solar panels on spacecraft, as the industry favours efficiency over cost for space-based solar power.

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Second, because Gallium is a by-product of the smelting of other metals, GaAs Solar cells are relatively insensitive to heat and it can keep high efficiency when temperature is quite high.

Multi-junction cells consist of multiple thin films, each essentially a solar cell grown on top of another, typically using metalorganic vapour phase epitaxy.

Multi-junction cells were originally developed for special applications such as satellites and space exploration, but are now used increasingly in terrestrial concentrator photovoltaics, an emerging technology that uses lenses and curved mirrors to concentrate sunlight onto small, highly efficient multi-junction solar cells.

Tandem solar cells based on monolithic, series connected, gallium indium phosphide, gallium arsenide, and germanium p–n junctions, are increasing sales, despite cost pressures.

Perovskite solar cells are solar cells that include a perovskite-structured material as the active layer.

Perovskite solar cells are forecast to be extremely cheap to scale up, making them a very attractive option for commercialisation.

The inclusion of the toxic element lead in the most efficient perovskite solar cells is a potential problem for commercialisation.

The first patent of bifacial solar cells was filed by Japanese researcher Hiroshi Mori, in 1966.

In 1981 the company Isofoton was founded in Malaga to produce the developed bifacial Solar cells, thus becoming the first industrialization of this PV cell technology.

Either of these techniques could be used to produce higher efficiency solar cells by allowing solar photons to be more efficiently used.

Dye-sensitized solar cells are made of low-cost materials and do not need elaborate manufacturing equipment, so they can be made in a DIY fashion.

However, the dyes in these Solar cells suffer from degradation under heat and UV light and the cell casing is difficult to seal due to the solvents used in assembly.

Solar cells are commonly encapsulated in a transparent polymeric resin to protect the delicate solar cell regions for coming into contact with moisture, dirt, ice, and other conditions expected either during operation or when used outdoors.

Some solar cells have textured front surfaces that, like anti-reflection coatings, increase the amount of light reaching the wafer.

Solar cells panels have a sheet of tempered glass on the front, and a polymer encapsulation on the back.

Solar cells are manufactured in volume in Japan, Germany, China, Taiwan, Malaysia and the United States, whereas Europe, China, the U S, and Japan have dominated in installed systems.