A diode made from a semiconductor can generate electricity in the presence of light. Instructables user nevdull shows how to generate a modest amount of power by arranging four 1N4148 diodes in parallel.
Go ahead and dig out a few diodes from your tacklebox, toolbox, bead drawer, or whatever you keep all your electronic goodies in and put them in parallel. Connect your voltmeter to either side and take a reading in ambient light. I get about 4-5mV in ambient light.
Next, grab your maglight and while still taking a reading shine a focused beam on the diodes and see what your voltmeter says. In my configuration using the diodes I had at hand, I was able to get more than 100mV from four diodes. That’s not too shabby, especially if you’re shuffling that voltage off to a capacitor to either save for later or to build up a larger charge to do something more useful, like light an LED (yeah, like that’s more useful) or run your garbage disposal.
20 thoughts on “Make a Solar Panel Using Diodes”
Comments are closed.
Can LED’s do the same? Recharge batteries in LED flashlights for example? Circuits please?
Yes,LEDs do the same.See YouTube video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEoCb1ycwEE
Always include a schematic – leaves no doubts!
The circuit is diodes in parallel
Put them in series and you’ll get higher voltage at the expense of current.
Reblogged this on THE Blog.
E^2/R=P… 100mv^2/10,000,000= 1nWATT (for FOUR diodes…)
Find a MILLION nanoWATTs and you get a milliWATT.
It would be interesting to know the physics / chemistry behind this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYMWsmertQk
Thanks, SkipF! I’ll have to find time to watch the whole lecture – good stuff.