More About Solar Panels

Photovoltaic solar panels generate electricity by the photovoltaic effect.This is discovered by 19yr old Edmund Becquerel in 1839.What is photovoltaic effec? is the phenomenon that certain materials produce electic current when they are exposed to light.
For traditional PV solar panels a semiconductor PN junction is manufactured in which two halves of one pure silicon crystal are doped with two different dopants . One half of the crystal is left electron deficient, and one half is left with an excess of electrons . The dopants in the semiconductor lead to an electric field across the junction between the two halves of the crystal with electrons able to travel in one direction only - from the electron rich half to the electron poor half.

Electrons move from the negative side to the positive side of the crystal recombining with holes.
As the silicon atoms themselves do not move, any electrons without holes to cover in the p-type side remain negatively charged and any holes which remain uncovered by electrons in the n-type side are left positively charged, and. This leaves positive material close to the junction in the n-type side, and negative material close to the junction in the p-type side with a potential between the two sides of around 0.6-0.7 volts in a silicon pn junction.

The light from the sun is made up of packets of energy called Photons. Every photon carries an amount of energy corresponding to its wavelength of light. When a photon strikes a solar cell it can do one of three things: be absorbed,pass straight through or be reflected. When the photon is absorbed, its energy is absorbed by an electron in an atom of the solar cell enabling it to escape from its normal position, cross the junction and fill a hole. The electrons then flow through a load , and complete the circuit by recombining with the holes they left behind. In so doing energy from the sunlight has been extracted and used at an efficiency of around 5-15%.
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