eli5: Do solar panels only work with sunlight, or can they be tuned to capture energy from other wavelengths outside the visible spectrum?

Question

eli5: Do solar panels only work with sunlight, or can they be tuned to capture energy from other wavelengths outside the visible spectrum?

In: 2876

Answer 1

“Sunlight” is not just the visible spectrum. Sunlight includes a ton of IR and UV. When you feel the sun’s glow, that’s IR radiation (or “light” if you want).

Visible light is 400-700nm. All photovoltaic solar cells use a broader band than this. It varies with the specific chemical composition/technology but all pull energy from lots of the UV spectrum (which is low energy) and some of the IR spectrum (high energy but creates unwanted heat).

In a sense solar thermal panels are “tuned” for IR.