A complex of more than ten laboratory tasks was developed complementary to lectures and seminars for teaching of principles of solar cells and their applications. The laboratory covers topics of basic characteristics, materials and types of solar cells as well as of characterization methods and applications in solar energy conversion and can be extended to research aspects. Students with differ...

The conversion of sunlight into electricity using solar cells has attracted very much attention during the last decades. Solar energy is clean, abundant and renewable. Solar cells found applications in many different fields such as in calculators, solar lamps and even on spacecraft and satellites. Historically, conventional solar cells were built from inorganic materials. The efficiency of such...

Mg-Ti-H thin films are found to have very attractive optical properties: they absorb 87% of the solar radiation in the hydrogenated state and only 32% in the metallic state. Furthermore, in the absorbing state Mg-Ti-H has a low emissivity; at 400 K only 10% of black body radiation is emitted. The transition between both optical states is fast, robust and reversible. The sum of these properties ...

Though environmental improvement has been claimed for the application of nanotechnology to solar cells, several characteristics of the fullerene-based organic, and the dye-sensitized nanoparticulate, solar cell are not conducive to such improvement. These include relatively high energy and materials inputs in the production of nanoparticles, a relatively low solar radiation to electricity conve...

Renewable resource of carbon-free energy is crucial in the current scenario of global warming and our growing energy needs. Besides, the significance of safer energy resources has been underscored by many nuclear mishaps, including the recently crippled Fukushima Nuclear power plant in Japan. Sunlight is the most promising alternative to nuclear fuels and greenhouse-gas-emitting fossil and alco...

The damages and logical failures in dierent parts of a satellite may occur during a solar event, when a bulk of solar energetic particles approaching the Earth. During solar events, these particles may cause extensive damages which are even permanent (hard errors). A way of damage reduction is designing a proper coating as the fuselage. As protons are the major component of solar particles and ...

the dye-sensitized solar cells (dssc) have been regarded as one of the most promising new generation solar cells. tremendous research efforts have been invested to improve the efficiency of solar energy conversion which is generally determined by the light harvesting efficiency, electron injection efficiency and undesirable electron lifetime. in this review, various characteristics of dye-sensi...

Photovoltaic phenomenon was first observed by E. Becquerel (Becquerel) in 1839. He observed the electric current-lit silver electrode, immersed in the electrolyte. In 1894, taking advantage of the observed photoconductivity phenomenon in amorphous selenium the semiconductor solar cell was developed. The very first silicon p-n junction solar cell was made in 1954, energy conversion efficiency of...

Photovoltaic (PV) technologies for solar energy conversion represent promising routes to green and renewable energy generation. Despite relevant PV technologies being available for more than half a century, the production of solar energy remains costly, largely owing to low power conversion efficiencies of solar cells. The main difficulty in improving the efficiency of PV energy conversion lies...