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It's a crystal. It guides energy with less dissipation then do this other materials.

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It would certainly require a material that allows electron release from energies lower than those of the visible spectrum. The energy of a wave is given by E=hf where h is the planck constant (6.63 x 10^-34) and f is the frequency. The wavelengths of IR light range from 0.001 m to 750 x 10^-9 m. (Hyperphysics.com, infrared) Using this knowledge you can get ...

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A laser is just a thin slice from the spectrum of light. Is it more efficient compared to the visible spectrum of light? It depends on the frequency of the laser and how efficiently the solar panel can turn light of that frequency into electrical energy. If a solar panel would operate better/best with light of a certain frequency, using a laser with that ...

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I think a simple view is this: The solar cell must have a PN junction, which is a junction between p-type (many holes, no electrons) and n-type (many electrons, no holes) materials. Right where they meet there is actually a "depletion width" within which there is hardly any of either. Within this region, as photons come in they generate electron-hole pairs, ...

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You can actually do this a bit more simply (or at least without integrations). Luminance is invariant in geometrical optics. That is, the brightness of an image cannot be brighter than the source. The radius of the sun is 0.6958 x 10^6 meters. The radius of the earth's orbit is a mean of 149.6 x 10^6. Then the brightness at the surface of the sun is the ...

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The filling order of the shells is 1s, 2s, 2p, 3s, 3p, 4s, 3d, ... Silicon, with 14 electrons, has only filled 1s, 2s, 2p, 3s and half of 3p. It hasn't any electrons in 4s or 3d (in the ground state). Although the 3rd orbital can have a maximum of 18 electrons, the shell is considered full with 8 electrons if the 4s is not filled.

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The sun is an extended source. This means that it occupies a definite solid angle in the sky $\omega = 6.8\times 10^{-5} Sr$. To visualise this (not to scale), let say that the black area in the following diagram is the angular extend of the sun as seen from the surface of the Earth (ignore the other labels), What happens when we concentrate sunlight ...

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The E=mc^2 formula only applies to an object at rest, and light is never at rest. You want to use the more general formula: $E^2={m_0}^2c^4+p^2c^2$ Then you can set the mass to zero. $E=pc$ What this says is that light has momentum, which is related to its energy.

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This is because instead of $$\dfrac{1}{2}mv^2$$ or $$E = mc^2$$ the energy of light is given by $$E = hf$$ Where h is a number called Planck's constant and f is frequency (sometimes v is used) Here is an example, as requested: Imagine red light with $620. nm$ wavelength. The frequency of this light is $0.483$ x $10^{15}Hz$ This makes the energy of a ...

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We know that solar cells generate electricity by utilizing the energy of the photon, This is an every day language, electricity. It means things electrical in general every day language. but how does it generate electricity forever? What is generated when the photons hit any material, is heat, and the sun's energy is at maximum 1300Watts per ...

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You're looking at solar cells for terrestrial operation. The main efficiency number is not Power_electric/Power_solar, but Power_electric/investment. Capturing the last few bits of blue light just isn't worth it. In space applications, the investment is dominated by the launch costs. Using a more exotic material to capture 1% more energy might shave a ...

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