Cheap and easy to build homemade solar cells

[hartiberlin]

hi,thanks for posting this, but the problem is,that this copperoxid cell does not put out much energy...at least in the old article scitoys...Can somebody try it with real copperoxid put onto a copperplate ? Thanks, regards, Stefan.
P.S. posting this from my new pocket pc via wap2 interface login...great.

[r8rchris]

Here is some info I came across on cheap and very simple plans(with plenty of room for personal improvements) for homemade solar cells

[neutrino]

Build your own Cuprous oxide Solar Cell instructions:
The cell produces 50 microamps at 0.25 volts
Should be possible to improve drastically..!?

http://www.scitoys.com/scitoys/scitoys/echem/echem3.html#flatpanel
http://www.scitoys.com/scitoys/scitoys/echem/echem2.html

[hartiberlin]

Cuprous oxide solar cells are just too weak in output.
We need to design something like the screen printing with the CdS and Tellurium.
Maybe we still find better and cheaper and less toxic materials that
can be screen printed onto a glas surface.
The most important thing is to get a very small thickness P-N Layer somehow
in the uMeter range and graphite powder or plates  can be used as the backside electrode
for current output.
Regards, Stefan.

[hartiberlin]

Here is a very well documented video description
how to make a Graetzel cell from
conductive glas ( conductive indiumtinoxid (ITO) layer on the glas surface)
then put a paste of Titandioxide on it, heat it and
then put hibiskus tee or fresh blueberry or rasberry juice on it,
add some jod-Kaliumjodid electrolyte and have graphite as the other electrode
and you have a cheap solarcell...

http://www.hmi.de/it/zentral/multimedia/solar_energy/duenn_zellen/tee_film.html

I will try to modify this and make it even cheaper...
substitute the ITO layer just with graphite also and
just mix graphite with Titandioxid and heat it and then put rasberry juice in
it and use this in a saltwater cell with the other electrode as Zink-Alu alloy..
As electrolyte I would probably then also use this jod-Kaliumjodid solution.
This would have the advantage that you need no expensive ITO coating of the
glas and have very cheap material with which you can build pretty big solar cells.
also these might have then already a open circuit voltage of about 1 Volts
and not just 0.45 Volts as the Graetzel cell...

Regards, Stefan.