Topic summary
Photovoltaic cell
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Solar cell.
History
The photovoltaic effect was experimentally demonstrated first by French physicist Edmond Becquerel. In 1839, at age 19, he built the world's first photovoltaic cell in his father's laboratory. Willoughby Smith first described the "Effect of Light on Selenium during the passage of an Electric Current" in a 20 February 1873 issue of Nature. In 1876 William Grylls Adams and Richard Evans Day constructed the first solid state photovoltaic cell. In 1883 Charles Fritts built another solid state photovoltaic cell by coating the semiconductorselenium with a thin layer of gold to form the junctions; the device was only around 1% efficient. Other milestones include: