How a Diode Tames the Sun

Yashika Gupta

Department of Electroni Science,University of Delhi

With growing interest in renewable energy, a large work force would be required to engineer, install and maintain devices for energy harvesting. The current trend points to the non-polluting use of solar energy. Recognizing this, it becomes necessary to have a large audience understand the basic working of solar cells. This article focuses on the conceptual understanding of a p-n semiconductor junction and how by material engineering the junction can be used to harvest solar energy. The manuscript provides an insight into the simple semiconductor physics and its implementation at the device level.