PatFussy@lemm.ee 11 months ago
I would imagine it could only be useful for 30 minutes before the cell would be unusable. Arent solar cells just P-N junctions where if it is really thin it would just run out of holes to fill?
PatFussy@lemm.ee 11 months ago
I would imagine it could only be useful for 30 minutes before the cell would be unusable. Arent solar cells just P-N junctions where if it is really thin it would just run out of holes to fill?
wahming@monyet.cc 11 months ago
By your logic all solar panels would run out of these holes after a certain period of use?
herrvogel@lemmy.world 11 months ago
They might be right for other reasons though. I once worked at a lab where they were doing r&d on this sort of thin solar cells, and their stability and longevity was the #1 biggest problem. They worked great inside those anaerobic box thingies in the lab, but they degraded to nothing very quickly upon first contact with real atmosphere.
wahming@monyet.cc 11 months ago
Yeah but that’s experimental tech. OP’s talking about limitations on normal solar panels
PatFussy@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Im talking about limitations of thin solar cells largely. I think there is usually enough doped material in regular cells that it usually isnt looked at.
PatFussy@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Yes, is that not the case?
wahming@monyet.cc 11 months ago
No, definitely not. There’s no such lifetime limit.
PatFussy@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Why not? I have not looked at this in forever so im probably wrong but I thought that these pn pairs end up creating some band gap. Over time that band gap widens until the energy from the sunlight just isnt strong enough to move through the system. In the end, it has a finite qty of holes so that limit depends on the qty of doped materials.
Again i dont remember well so 🤷