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| Solar Cell Technologies |
We make solar cells, and we group them into larger units called modules, these modules, these modules can again be connected together to form networks. Thus, we can see that there is a hierarchy, where the solar cell is the smallest part.
Let us look into the structure and properties of the solar "cells," but keep in mind, when combined into modules and panels, solar "cells" here are mechanically supported by other materials aluminum, glass and plastic.
A solar cell materials that can be manufactured from silicon is it is the material that you find inside the integrated circuits and transistors. There are good reasons for using silicon, it is the most abundant element on earth after oxygen. When you consider that the sand is silicon dioxide (SiO2), you realize there are a lot of it there!
Silicon can be used in several different ways to produce solar cells. The most efficient solar technology is the "monocrystalline solar cells," these are silicon wafers from a large single crystal silicon. As a single crystal, it has a very regular and no boundaries the crystal grains and it works very well. You can usually identify a monocrystalline solar cell, as seems to be round or square with rounded corners.
One of the caveats of this type of method, as you will see later, is that when a silicon is "grown", it produces a round section of solar cells, which do not fit well with the manufacture of solar panels, round cells is difficult to organize effectively. The second type of solar cell, we will consider also made from silicon, is slightly different, it is a "polycrystalline" solar cell. Polycrystalline cells are still made from solid silicon, but the process used to produce silicon from which the cells are cut slightly different. This translates to "square" of solar cells. However, there are plenty of "crystals" in a cell polycrystalline, so they perform somewhat less effective, even if they are cheaper to produce with less waste.
Now, the problem of silicon solar cells, as discussed in the next experiment is that they are indeed "production lot" which means they are produced in small quantities, and are relatively expensive to manufacture . In addition, as all these cells are formed of "slices" of silicon, they use a lot of material, which means they are quite expensive.
Now there is another type of solar cells, so-called "thin film" solar cells. The difference between these cells and crystalline, is that rather than using crystalline silicon, these chemical use semiconduction. Chemical compounds are deposited on a "substrate" that is to say a basis for the solar cell. There are formulations that do not require silicon for all, as copper indium diselenide (CIS) and cadmium telluride. However, there is also a process called "amorphous silicon", where the silicon is deposited on a substrate, but not in a uniform crystal structure, but as a thin film. In addition, rather than being slow to produce thin-film solar cells can be produced using a continuous process, which makes them much cheaper.
However, the downside is that, even if they are less expensive, thin film solar cells are less efficient than their crystalline counterparts.
When looking at the bottom of crystalline cells and thin film cells can be seen that crystalline cells to produce the most power for a given area. However, the problem with them is that they are expensive to produce and very hard (as you're limited to the construction of panels of sizes of standard cells and can not change or alter their shape).
