Solar cells (as the name implies) are designed to convert (at least a portion of) available light into electrical energy. They do this without the use of either chemical reactions or moving parts.
History
The development of the solar cell stems from the work of the French physicist Antoine-CĂ©sar Becquerel in 1839. Becquerel discovered the photovoltaic effect while experimenting with a solid electrode in an electrolyte solution; he observed that voltage developed when light fell upon the electrode. About 50 years later, Charles Fritts constructed the first true solar cells using junctions formed by coating the semiconductor selenium with an ultrathin, nearly transparent layer of gold. Fritts's devices were very inefficient, transforming less than 1 percent of the absorbed light into electrical energy.
By 1927 another metalĂsemiconductor-junction solar cell, in this case made of copper and the semiconductor copper oxide, had been demonstrated. By the 1930s both the selenium cell and the copper oxide cell were being employed in light-sensitive devices, such as photometers, for use in photography. These early solar cells, however, still had energy-conversion efficiencies of less than 1 percent. This impasse was finally overcome with the development of the silicon solar cell by Russell Ohl in 1941. In 1954, three other American researchers, G.L. Pearson, Daryl Chapin, and Calvin Fuller, demonstrated a silicon solar cell capable of a 6-percent energy-conversion efficiency when used in direct sunlight. By the late 1980s silicon cells, as well as those made of gallium arsenide, with efficiencies of more than 20 percent had been fabricated. In 1989 a concentrator solar cell, a type of device in which sunlight is concentrated onto the cell surface by means of lenses, achieved an efficiency of 37 percent due to the increased intensity of the collected energy. In general, solar cells of widely varying efficiencies and cost are now available.
Structure
Modern solar cells are based on semiconductor physics -- they are basically just P-N junction photodiodes with a very large light-sensitive area. The photovoltaic effect, which causes the cell to convert light directly into electrical energy, occurs in the three energy-conversion layers.
The first of these three layers necessary for energy conversion in a solar cell is the top junction layer (made of N-type semiconductor ). The next layer in the structure is the core of the device; this is the absorber layer (the P-N junction). The last of the energy-conversion layers is the back junction layer (made of P-type semiconductor).
As may be seen in the above diagram, there are two additional layers that must be present in a solar cell. These are the electrical contact layers. There must obviously be two such layers to allow electric current to flow out of and into the cell. The electrical contact layer on the face of the cell where light enters is generally present in some grid pattern and is composed of a good conductor such as a metal. The grid pattern does not cover the entire face of the cell since grid materials, though good electrical conductors, are generally not transparent to light. Hence, the grid pattern must be widely spaced to allow light to enter the solar cell but not to the extent that the electrical contact layer will have difficulty collecting the current produced by the cell. The back electrical contact layer has no such diametrically opposed restrictions. It need simply function as an electrical contact and thus covers the entire back surface of the cell structure. Because the back layer must be a very good electrical conductor, it is always made of metal.
Operation
Solar cells are characterized by a maximum Open Circuit Voltage (Voc) at zero output current and a Short Circuit Current (Isc) at zero output voltage. Since power can be computed via this equation:
P = I * V
Then with one term at zero these conditions (V = Voc / I = 0, V = 0 / I = Isc ) also represent zero power. As you might then expect, a combination of less than maximum current and voltage can be found that maximizes the power produced (called, not surprisingly, the "maximum power point"). Many BEAM designs (and, in particular, solar engines) attempt to stay at (or near) this point. The tricky part is building a design that can find the maximum power point regardless of lighting conditions.
