PV Gap

Fred Said:

can i make a solar panel out of aluminum foil?

We Answered:

You can't make a solar panel to generate any reasonable amount of electricity from that.

You need a semiconductor to start with, in order to have something that can generate free charge carriers(electrons and holes) from photons. Then you need a junction which can separate the charges.

In principle you could make a Shottky Diode solar cell from copper if you could find a doped semiconductor to bond a sheet of it to the copper. To form a decent electric field there should be a significant difference in work functions between the copper and the semiconductor, this will generally require the semiconductor to be doped.

On top of this you would need a transparent conductor (most used are things like ITO or other 'TCOs' - Transparent Conducting Oxides) to be the top electrode to inject replacement charges into the semiconductor to replace the effect of recombination current.



In summary, it's difficult to DIY. You generally need complicated machinery to get decent crystal growth and/or doping.