Is Germanium Used In Solar Panels

41 germanium manufacturers are listed below.

Is germanium used in solar panels.

This although not amazingly impressive is high. Germanium is also used to make solar panels that help convert sunlight into energy and for fiber optics. Companies involved in germanium production a key sourcing item for solar thin film panel manufacturers. I don t get too much into that end of the solar world but i don t know where else germanium cells are used.

In a recent article in the magazine electronic news gallium arsenide was tested on a germanium substrate. A silicon solar cell with silicon germanium filter using a step cell design large and a gallium arsenide phosphide layer on silicon step cell proof of concept solar cell small. Learn how and why blocking diodes and bypass diodes are used. Germanium is never used by itself as a solar cell because the efficiency is much lower than silicon a cheaper alternative.

Most of those links are. Germanium solar cells are expensive and so are only now used mainly on spacecraft but with the improved wafer slicing method the idea is to make germanium based high efficiency solar cells for uses where cost now is a factor particularly for solar power on earth says eberhard ebbe bamberg an assistant professor of mechanical engineering. The germanium on nothing approach taken by the team described in the paper germanium on nothing for epitaxial liftoff of gaas solar cells published in the journal joule involves the. Solar panels are a major use of germanium.

This makes them a good candidate for a stacked type of solar panels used for collecting light from all across the spectrum. Diode and unidirectional flow of current in simplest terms a diode can be understood as a two terminal electronic device which allows electrical current to pass in one direction. The resulting efficiency level was 24 9 for a single junction. You do see germanium used in some cells where that higher efficiency is a requirement for the specific application and where in money isn t really an object think nasa the mars rovers and high end research.

A blocking diode and bypass diode are commonly used in solar energy systems and solar panels. Germanium is the substrate of the wafers for high efficiency multijunction photovoltaic cells for space applications. The plot below shows the theoretical efficiency as a function of band gap in the shockley quessier limit.