Solar Energy: The Physics And Engineering Of Ph... Today

Fine metal "fingers" are printed onto the cell to collect the flowing electrons. The engineering trade-off here is surface area: the grid must be conductive enough to carry current but thin enough not to shade the silicon from the sun.

When a photon (a particle of light) hits the solar cell with energy equal to or greater than the band gap, it knocks an electron loose. This creates an electron-hole pair . Solar Energy: The Physics and Engineering of Ph...

The foundation of solar energy is the , first observed in 1839 by Edmond Becquerel. To understand how it works, we have to look at the subatomic level of semiconductors, usually silicon. Fine metal "fingers" are printed onto the cell