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

They can get energy from other wavelengths as well, but the material in them needs to be able to catch those wavelengths. High quality modern panels can catch six different wavelength areas to have an efficiency of about 40%.

They are still expensive to make (they have about 140 layers), so they are the sort of panels you will find on space ships, but not yet on houses.