Electrode Electrode An electrode is an electrical conductor used to make contact with a nonmetallic part of a circuit (e.g. a semiconductor, an electrolyte, a vacuum or air). The word was coined by William Whewell at the request of the scientist Michael Faraday from two Greek words: "elektron", meaning amber (from which the word electricity is derived), and "hodos", a way. The electrophore, invented by Johan Wilcke, was an early version of an electrode used to study static electricity. An electrode in an electrochemical cell is referred to as either an "anode" or a "cathode" (words that were coined by William
Organic solar cell holes to the negative electrode. In 1958 the photovoltaic effect or the creation of voltage of a cell based on magnesium phthalocyanine (MgPc)—a macrocyclic compound having an alternating nitrogen atom-carbon atom ring structure—was discovered to have a photovoltage of 200 mV. An Al/MgPc/Ag cell obtained photovoltaic efficiency of 0.01% under illumination at 690 nm. Conjugated polymers were also used in this type of photovoltaic cell. One device used polyacetylene (Fig 1) as the organic layer, with Al and graphite, producing an open circuit voltage of 0.3 V and a charge collection efficiency of 0.3%. An Al/poly(3-nethyl-thiophene)/Pt cell had an external