inventers of the solar panel

by Ryan Somerville

The main inventor of the solar panel was Alexandre-Edmund Becquerel. He noticed the photovoltaic effect in 1839. The photovoltaic effect is the change of light energy from the sun into electrical energy. 44 years later the first solar cell was built by Charles Fritts. He covered the semiconductor selenium with a thin layer of gold. Doing this did work but had an efficiency rate of 1%. Since it was so costly to make and inefficient, it was never adopted.

Russel Ohl was a researcher in the field of semiconductors. Using this knowledge he determined that super-purifying geranium was needed to create a reusable semiconductor material for diodes. It was this information that led to create the silicon solar cell in 1946. By mixing silicon with certain impurities, the silicon becomes sensitive to light. These cells had a conversion rate of approximately 6%.

Solar panels are said to be the most promising area of alternative energy.