Electrical Characterization of Solar Cell using Arduino and Polarization Film

A solar cell laboratory course for high school and college undergraduate students is proposed. The electrical characterization of the solar cell is performed to confirm the functionality of the device as both a diode and a power source. The efficiency of the solar cell in the illuminated condition is found to be 13.1 %. We find the efficiency of the solar cell slightly decreases as the intensity of light decreases. However, there is no significant difference in efficiency except for in the opaque condition. A calibrated solar cell, multimeter, current sensor, Arduino, coding and polarization are used to perform the experiment.