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US 6,600,100 B2Granted
Solar cell having an integral monolithically grown bypass diode
AssigneeEmcore Corporation
InventorsFrank Ho, Milton Y. Yeh, Chaw-Long Chu, Peter A. Iles
Life of this patent
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Abstract
The present invention is directed to systems and methods for protecting a solar cell. The solar cell includes first solar cell portion. The first solar cell portion includes at least one junction and at least one solar cell contact on a backside of the first solar cell portion. At least one bypass diode portion is epitaxially grown on the first solar cell portion. The bypass diode has at least one contact. An interconnect couples the solar cell contact to the diode contact.
Claims27
A solar cell circuit comprising:
- a multijunction solar cell device having a plurality of semiconductor layers and including at least two photovoltaic cells;
- and
- at least one bypass diode with at least one epitaxially grown layer integral to said multijunction solar cell structure, wherein said at least one bypass diode is electrically connected across said at least two photovoltaic cells to protect said at least two photovoltaic cells against reverse biasing.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.