Who built one of the first solar cells using selenium and gold?
The ingenuity people used in harnessing waterpower can be seen in this medieval-style mill. The waterwheel is turned by a stream and is connected to a shaft that leads into the building. At the other end of the shaft is a gear. The connection of a series of gears translates the power from the stream to a shaft that drives a millstone, which grinds flour from grain.
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The American inventor Charles Fritts is credited with building one of the first true solar cells in the late 1800s. He constructed these devices by creating junctions that coated the semiconductor selenium with an ultrathin, nearly transparent layer of gold.21
Although these early cells were inefficient—converting less than 1 percent of absorbed light into electrical energy—they were significant for demonstrating the potential of photovoltaic technology.2