Hi All
Today I made a discovery of a solar cell made prior to 1913.  This is from a book called THE BOY ELECTRICIAN by Alfred P. Morgan pub 1913.  Search for it on scrib.com.  On page 185 of the doc which is page 355 of the book is this brief mention of a solar cell made of violet glass and dissimilar metals. About the size of a common window.  Old stuff I know like a thermocouple.  But claimed one day in sun could light 30 light bulbs for three days!  Can a modern solar cell that size do that?  Have we been led down the wrong path?  If they could do that in 1913, where is that tech today, other than suppressed?  Only said Massachusetts inventor.  Maybe someone can find patent?

Download this book for your library.  A complete DIY manual to make everything.  About 200M of interesting look into the past.

tishatang

 The idea is that the aluminum and carbon black surfaces do not come in contact with each other so they are electrically isolated.

Sunlight enters the tube at the top, strikes the aluminum cone surface and ejects an electron from the metal surface (ionization energy of aluminum) which is deflected sideways (due to the cone shape) and strikes the carbon black inside surface of the tube.

..... The idea is that the ejected electrons would flow the circuit from carbon black back to the aluminum metal.

I am getting erratic readings right now when the tube is pointed toward the overhead fluorescent lights, some as high as 0.6 volts. ...
...

Hi RR2,
I missed that post last summer. WOW.

I am wondering what 'kind' of voltage this is?
Is it dc?
If so, can you make 3 and put them in series just to know?

It could be dc to begin with, but as it moves around it could oscillate, so I am curious.

Someone told me RF is not usually in the mv but is normally in the uv so, I bet you have something.

thank you,

jeanna

Another good demo.
(in German)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxjLASCU46s&feature=related

@mdmiller
Thanks for looking, but that's not the process.  I gave a bad link name.  Go here and download the referenced book:

http://www.scribd.com/

THE BOY ELECTRICIAN by Alfred P. Morgan 1913

The process is a twisted wire mesh of copper and German-silver wire behind violet glass.  Looks easy to make but need patience.

okay - i just read through a few posts here in the forum
i was the producer of the video posted above ("How to make a dye sensitized solar cell HTL Braunau" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaGrHrLdRhs) and i have worked on that topic for 2 years now. The pn junction what you always talk about is in the case of the dye sensitized solar cell not necesarry! the dye which is sticked to the titanium dioxide is lifted to a higher energy state and loses an electron to the tio2 - which then transports it to the ITO glass plate and over the load and counter electrode back to the dye.
another point - cheap ITO glass can be purchased bye asking for heat isolating window glass because they are electrically conductive on one side
i attachted my english instruction sheet with a overview on the technology and the abstract of my work
feel free to contact me or reply to my post....
regards andi

hey!
ok just a short thing again: there is no pn layer in the dsc as it is in a silicon solar cell!
of course you need the ito as well as the tio2 because you can't get the electron from the tio2 directly. you need a certain layer (ITO)  that is capable of conduct to a let's say copper wire!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dye-sensitized_solar_cells
regards andi

could you please explain how you got the electric circuit with the graphite saltwater thing....
like: dye->tio2->ito->load->ito->graphite->iodine->dye (for the dsc)
saltwater simply not works because there is no redox couple - iodine has I- and (I3)-
you don't have anything like that with Na+ and Cl-
and the bandgap that you always talk about is the energy that the dye needs (and gets from the photon) to lift an electron from the normal state to the excited state!

you can really believe me ;-)
i worked on that topic for many many hundreds of hours! maybe read the wikipedia article and you will know what I want to explain to you

try optical brighters as your dye source and or fluorescent dyes.

some homemade LASER Dyes people use that might help in some solar cell experiments for dye type solar cells.

I've been looking into reasonable things for DIY laser folks, and so far I have two cheap and easy candidates, which I describe on Inexpensive Laser Dyes for the Do-It-Yourselfer. In case you want a quick precis, they are:


"Highlight" fluorescent markers. I've lased 2 or 3 of the available colors. The Sharpie "Accent" yellow-barrel marker (makes a yellow-green highlight) is probably the best I've found so far.

Several of the brighteners used in laundry detergents are good blue or indigo laser dyes. It is possible to use some liquid laundry detergents directly. I lased All “Free Clear” in 2000, using a low-pressure nitrogen laser; and Jarrod Kinsey has recently been getting very nice results with Arm and Hammer 2x liquid concentrate, pumping it with a TEA nitrogen laser.
If you try this, remember to use detergents that are listed as “No Dyes, No Perfumes”, and are as close to water-clear as possible: murky blue gunk is obviously not going to work. A few of the better organic detergents actually are free of dyes, including optical brighteners, so it’s a good idea to test for fluorescence before you buy, or look for the word “brightener” in the ingredient list. OTOH, most or all of the major brands, at least the ones that are transparent, appear to be good candidates.

You can, alternatively, make an alcohol extract of a dry powder detergent (I have gotten my best results with Arm and Hammer). This works extremely well, provided you can filter or centrifuge the extract to remove the remaining dusty bits of detergent. I believe that this method works best with 91% pure (or higher) isopropyl alcohol or 95% ethanol, but it may be possible to do it with 70% isopropyl rubbing alcohol.

Far and away, however, the best thing I've found along these lines so far is “Optic Whitener”, from Dharma Trading Co. A very small amount of this, diluted with isopropyl alcohol or ethanol, will fill a dye cuvette that is pumped by a nitrogen laser; and the bottle contains 8 ounces, so it will last several lifetimes. (I have not yet tried it in a flashlamp-pumped dye laser, but I will when I have time, and I'm confident that it will work nicely.)