Who built one of the first solar cells using selenium and gold?

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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