How Silicon makes a Solar Cell

How Silicon makes a Solar Cell

Silicon has some special chemical properties, especially in its crystalline form.
An atom of silicon has 14 electrons, arranged in three different shells. The first two shells
which hold two and eight electrons respectively are completely full. The outer shell, however,
is only half full with just four electrons. A silicon atom will always look for ways to fill up its
last shell, and to do this, it will share electrons with four nearby atoms. It's like each atom
holds hands with its neighbors, except that in this case, each atom has four hands joined to
four neighbors. That's what forms the crystalline structure, and that structure turns out to be
important to this type of PV cell.

Solar cell: