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Who knew you could use the guts of a power transistor as a solar cell! Steven fromRimStar even takes it a step further and chains five 2n3055 in a base to collector configuration to generate enough voltage to power a small calculator. Funny how some electronics form China are working fakes. The small calculator he got has a small solar cell in it already but once the case was cracked open it turned out that the calculator was simply powered by a small coin cell battery. I wonder if the solar cell was a fake or they were just too lazy to hook it up.
Via: Solar Power and Electronic Measurement Equipment
“To easily make a homemade/DIY solar cell, get a power transistor like the 2N3055 and carefully cut open the case. That exposes the semiconductor material inside to light. Hook up some wires and you’re done! Doing this I managed to get around 500 millivolts and 5.5 milliamps which is 2.7 milliwatts.”