Silicon and nanocrystalinne solar cells??

Question

what is the function of the conducting plates in the solar cells?

Answer 1

The silicon allows charge to move in one direction but not the other. This promotes a buildup of electrons on one of the conducting plates and a shortage on the other.

In addition, the one plate actively puts out electrons that are permitted to flow across the silicon to the other  conducting plate.

So the conducting plates both provide electrons to move, and provide a path for them to get to and from the load circuits.

Answer 2

Anatomy of a Solar Cell

Before now, our silicon was all electrically neutral. Our extra electrons were balanced out by the extra protons in the phosphorous. Our missing electrons (holes) were balanced out by the missing protons in the boron. When the holes and electrons mix at the junction between N-type and P-type silicon, however, that neutrality is disrupted. Do all the free electrons fill all the free holes? No. If they did, then the whole arrangement wouldn't be very useful. Right at the junction, however, they do mix and form a barrier, making it harder and harder for electrons on the N side to cross to the P side. Eventually, equilibrium is reached, and we have an electric field separating the two sides.

This electric field acts as a diode, allowing (and even pushing) electrons to flow from the P side to the N side, but not the other way around. It's like a hill -- electrons can easily go down the hill (to the N side), but can't climb it (to the P side).

So we've got an electric field acting as a diode in which electrons can only move in one direction.

When light, in the form of photons, hits our solar cell, its energy frees electron-hole pairs.

Each photon with enough energy will normally free exactly one electron, and result in a free hole as well. If this happens close enough to the electric field, or if free electron and free hole happen to wander into its range of influence, the field will send the electron to the N side and the hole to the P side. This causes further disruption of electrical neutrality, and if we provide an external current path, electrons will flow through the path to their original side (the P side) to unite with holes that the electric field sent there, doing work for us along the way. The electron flow provides the current, and the cell's electric field causes a voltage. With both current and voltage, we have power, which is the product of the two.