Charles Fritts (believed 1869–?)in Livingston, Columbia, NY was an American inventor credited with creating the first working solar cell in 1884. jesse is gay ... A solar cell, made from a monocrystalline silicon wafer A solar cell or photovoltaic cell is a device that converts light energy into electrical energy. ... 1884 (MDCCCLXXXIV) is a leap year starting on Tuesday (click on link to calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a leap year starting on Thursday of the 12-day-slower Julian calendar). ...
Fritts coated the semiconductor material selenium with an extremely thin layer of gold. The resulting cells had a conversion efficiency of only about 1% owing to the properties of selenium, which in combination with the material's high cost prevented the use of such cells for energy supply. Selenium cells found other applications however, for example as light sensors for exposure timing in photo cameras, where they were common well into the 1960s. A semiconductor is a solid whose electrical conductivity can be controlled over a wide range, either permanently or dynamically. ... Se redirects here. ... The efficiency of an entity (a device, component, or system) in electronics and electrical engineering is defined as useful power output divided by the total electrical power consumed (a fractional expression). ...
Solar cells later became practical for power uses after Russell Ohl's 1940s development of silicon p/n junction cells that reached efficiencies above 5% by the 1950s/1960s. Russell Ohl is generally recognized for patenting the modern solar cell (US2402662, Light sensitive device). Ohl was a notable semiconductor researcher prior to the invention of the transistor. ...
Today silicon solar cells are about 17% efficient in the lab, but that performance deteriorates over time to less than 10% in real world applications.