How Solar Panels Work

In October 2026 China's commerce and science ministries proposed adding some solar-manufacturing technologies to the country's catalogue of technologies prohibited or restricted from export. To see why that know-how matters, this film goes inside a panel: photons and their energy, the silicon crystal and its band gap, doping with phosphorus and boron, the p-n junction whose built-in field turns light into current, cells, modules and inverters, the Shockley–Queisser limit, and the five-stage chain from polysilicon to module. Pick a photon colour, dope the silicon, close the circuit, move the Sun and explore the supply chain.

A trap for light

No fuel, no fire, no moving parts.

Packets of light

Colour sets the energy.

115 years to a working cell

Seen in 1839, explained later, made practical in 1954.

A crystal that holds on

It takes a minimum kick to free an electron.

Spare electrons, spare holes

Two recipes for silicon.

The junction

Where n meets p, a field is born.

Light the bulb

Free, push, collect.

From one cell to a field of them

Wire, seal, frame, repeat.

The inverter

Turning a steady push into a wave.

Move the Sun

The same beam, spread thinner.

The ceiling

Why no cell turns all of sunlight into power.

How close we get

From six percent toward the ceiling.

From sand to panel

A chain of five stages, mostly in one country.

Why the know-how matters

Cheaper, and contested.

A trap for light

Free, push, collect.

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