Before work and before I was fully awake (that is usually when the sudden ideas hit) I ended up thinking about semiconductors and the fact that two different semiconductors placed together could produce electricity from light in the form of a solar cell. So I thought about it all day at work and came home to test it out in a quick and basic way. What I did was cut two aluminum foil squares one being for the top of the cell and one being for the bottom of the cell. Then I cut four squares of heavy and strong paper towel, soaking one in an old plastic lid from a chip container in water mixed with Borax. Then I got another lid and soaked another piece of paper towel in water mixed with Alum. My plan was to pull the respective soaked pieces of paper towel out of the water and let them dry overnight but I became impatient. So they dried some but not fully. Anyway, I placed one of the squares soaked in Borax and partially dry over a square of aluminum foil and then proceeded to place two dry squares of paper towel over the top of that. Then I placed the somewhat dry paper towel square soaked in Alum on top of it all and finally placed the final square of aluminium over it all like a sandwich. I used some electrical tape to hold it together in the middle of each side of the square and tested it with the voltmeter. Being as it was still wet it was sort of a battery and was getting 0.01 and that is not what I wanted to do... make a battery as bad as it was. Yet, when I held the thing up to a fluorescent light the voltage increased to 0.04 which was interesting despite the fact that the surface aluminum was still reflective. Later I used a can of black spray paint to cover the aluminum in order to make it non reflective or less reflective and let it dry. Then, when I tested it against the light the highest reading I managed was 0.12 at one point. So my idea worked but the paper towel squares are still damp and I want to test it when they are completely dry and see what happens. By the way, I think the Borax is excellent for one of the layers but the Alum is similar to the Borax chemistry wise in a certain sense so since I don't have any phosphorus lying around at the moment please allow me to pose a question. Do you all have any ideas as to what might work better in order for the electrons to become more excited? Something easy to get around the house? Thanks for reading.
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