Hi,
I'm an A level student here in the UK, and have just handed in my rushed piece of coursework on how the incident angle of radiation effects the power produced by a solar cell.
Obviously I came to the conclusion that most was produced when the radiation was falling perpendicular but...
When power is generated in a solar cell, it is because of irradiance of radiation on a pn-junction. But in which part of the junction are the electron-hole pairs created? Is it just the depleted region or are they also created in the n- and p-type semiconductors?
An engineer's response...
Ok so right now the best solar cells get only about 20-30% of the energy available to it from the sun. This is because for each photon that knocks off an electron, any excess energy not needed to knock off the electron in the silicon is wasted.
And I read in howstuffworks.com that really good...
Hey I got the oppurtunity to work in a research lab that focused on CadTel solar cells this summer and learned a fair deal about them, I also intend to take a class on Photovoltaics in the spring but I was just wondering how people feel about the cadmium in cadtel and would love some more...
Does solar cell really only absorbs energy from sunlight? What about other sources of radiation such as thermal radiation?
Wouldn't it be great if there are some devices that can recycles energy produced in major cities and convert it into electrical energy?