Charles Fritts (1850 – 1903) was an American inventor credited with creating the first working selenium cell in 1883. According to

CleanTechnica ''CleanTechnica'' is a US-based online audio and video media company, that operates a website under the same name, dedicated to aggregating news in clean technology, sustainable energy, and Electric vehicle, electric vehicles, with a focus on Tes ...

, the world's first rooftop solar array, using Fritts' selenium cells, was installed in 1884 on a New York City rooftop. Bellingcat attributes a photo of the cells to the roof of George Cove's laboratory. Fritts coated the

semiconductor A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity between that of a conductor and an insulator. Its conductivity can be modified by adding impurities (" doping") to its crystal structure. When two regions with different doping level ...

material

selenium Selenium is a chemical element; it has symbol (chemistry), symbol Se and atomic number 34. It has various physical appearances, including a brick-red powder, a vitreous black solid, and a grey metallic-looking form. It seldom occurs in this elem ...

with an extremely thin layer of gold. The resulting cells had a conversion

electrical efficiency The efficiency of a system in electronics and electrical engineering is defined as useful power output divided by the total electrical power consumed (a vulgar fraction, fractional Expression (mathematics), expression), typically denoted by the G ...

of about 1% owing to the properties of selenium given the material's cost, was too low to economically use such cells. Selenium cells found other applications including as light sensors for exposure timing in photo cameras, where they were common into the 1960s. Solar cells later became practical for power uses after

Russell Ohl Russell Shoemaker Ohl (January 30, 1898 – March 20, 1987) was an American scientist who is generally recognized for patenting the modern solar cell (, "Light sensitive device"). Ohl was a notable semiconductor researcher prior to the invention ...

's 1941 development of silicon P/N junction cells that reached efficiencies above 5% by the 1950s/1960s. By 2006 the best silicon solar cells were over 40% efficient, with the industrial average over 17%. By 2022, the average efficiency of crystalline Silicon was 21%.Fraunhofer-Institut für Solare Energiesysteme ISE, https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/publications/studies/Photovoltaics-Report.pdf "Photovoltaics Report" 2023-02-21, page 30

See also

References

Further reading