Abstract:
Silicon solar cells (SSC) are based on the physical principles described by Planck’s Law. This law states that the energy of a single photon is equal to hυ, where (h) is Planck’s constant and υ is the frequency of the light. The energy is thus proportional to the frequency and inversely proportional to the wavelength. The silicon solar cell is the traditional solar cell and has found applications in various areas such as calculators, garden lamps, and roof mounted large area cells etc. The SSC has so far been the best candidate for conversion of sunlight and therefore the development and research of solar cells has been dominated by this. The SSCs trace their history back to the 1950s where the first SSC was reported by Chapin, Fuller and Pearson. It had a power conversion efficiency of 6%. The price per watt was very high, being as much as 200 $ per watt. This meant that SSCs were not seriously considered as an everyday power source for many decades, only in very remote places and if the costs were made unimportant by the benefits of SSCs, e.g. satellites. The SSCs has benefited from the fast development in the integrated circuit industry. This means that it is now possible to produce SSCs with efficiencies as high as 25%. In addition, this will lead to inexpensive, efficient and reliable SSCs than what was previously estimated. The prices for a solar cell generated power today lies between $ 10and 12W−1, based on today’s prices on the internet.
