How to Make Home made Solar Cells

Solar energy has been the wave of
the future for some time.


People have been talking about how effective it can be in replacing natural resources and how clean it is for decades, but the fact is that it takes time, money, and space to make your own homemade solar panels . The high efficiency solar cells you can buy from your local electronics store need silicon, high temperatures, vacuum sealing and a hefty chunk of cash from your wallet.

On the other hand, homemade solar cells don't take much time, can be slapped together in your kitchen, and are a fun project to learn how solar energy works.

What You'll Need

Here is a list of the materials you'll need before you can start making your own homemade solar cells:
Copper Flashing - half a square foot
2 Alligator Clip Leads
Sheet Metal Shears
Tap Water and Table Salt
Micro-ammeter - needs to be able to read currents between 10 and 50 microamps.
Electric Stove - either your kitchen stove or if it is gas, a small burner that you can pick up for $20.
Clear plastic bottle you can cut the top off of.
Sand Paper or Wire Brush


Building Your Homemade Solar Cells

To start putting your homemade solar cells together, you need to get your burner out and ready to use. Cut a piece of your copper sheeting out the size of the stove's burner. Make sure your hands are completely clean before starting and then wash the copper sheet with soap to get any grease or oil off of it (no fires). Clean the copper sheet with the sandpaper or wire brush to get any residues off as well.


Now, place the copper sheeting on the burner and turn the burner up to high. The copper will start to oxidize and change color. It will star to create a black layer of oxide, but this isn't what you want yet, so let it keep going until a thick layer of black forms - probably a good 30 minutes will be good until the coating can flake off completely.


When the 30 minutes is up, turn off your burner, let the copper cool on the burner so it doesn't cool too fast and then have the black layer flake off to reveal the cuprous oxide beneath - this will be a purple color. Make sure all the black stuff is gone and it's all purple now. Be careful though not to ruin anything or break the copper.


Now, cut another sheet of copper the same size as the first and bend them together so they will fit in the plastic bottle you have without touching. Have the red side of the copper sheet you cooked facing out from the bottle. Attach your alligator clips - one each to the two copper plates. The lead from the clean copper goes to the positive terminal and the one from the cooked copper goes to the negative terminal.


Mix two tablespoons of slat into some hot water and then stir until the salt dissolves. Pour your saltwater into the bottle and don't get the clips wet. Put enough water to not fully cover the plates, about an inch or so of space left.


By nature your cell is now a battery so it will always show about 5-6 microamps of current. In the sunlight though, it will jump to around 30-50 microamps because of the photoelectric effects of sunlight creating energy in the copper.


In the end, if you properly place all of your pieces, your homemade solar cells will produce enough electricity to operate a normal AA battery, solely by generating electricity from sunlight. Now, think of the same effect, only using silicon which is much more conductive and highly processed in those solar cells atop schools and nearby businesses. That is the energy of the sun at work.