Credit: Image courtesy of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
When light is absorbed by solar cells to make electricity, electrons and “missing electrons” are generated that move through the layers of materials in typical solar cells. This new material conducts the missing electrons, while being transparent and stable. In the high magnification colorized image of atomic structure in multiple layers typical for a solar cell, the junction of a layer of the transparent hole-conducting material (primarily yellow) with an electron-conducting layer (primarily green) is shown.