How to Make a Solar Cell Out of Metal
- 1). Turn the burner on your electric hot plate up to high. Once the burner is red hot, place one of your two sheets of copper flashing squarely on the burner and let it cook for half an hour. It should turn dark black.
- 2). Switch the burner off, then leave the copper flashing on it to cool slowly. The black coating will start to pop off in little flakes.
- 3). Remove the copper flashing from the burner once most of the black coating has popped off. Gently rub it between your hands under running water to remove more of the black cupric oxide, but don't worry about removing every fleck of black. It's more important that you preserve the delicate red layer of semiconductive cuprous oxide that formed below the cupric oxide.
- 4). Cut the top off the 2-liter plastic bottle so that its sides are vertically straight and remove the labels. Place both sheets of copper in the soda bottle, bending them so that they curve around the edges of the bottle without touching each other.
- 5). Fill the soda bottle with hot tap water to within about an inch of the top of each copper sheet; it's important that they're not completely submerged. Mix 2 to 3 tbsp. of salt into the hot water.
- 6). Connect one set of alligator clips between the positive terminal of the micro-ammeter and the uncooked copper sheet. Connect the other set of alligator clips between the negative micro-ammeter terminal and the cooked copper sheet. Make sure the copper sheets don't touch.
- 7). Move your homemade solar cell into the sun and watch the needle on the micro-ammeter to see how much current it's receiving.