Solar cell circuit and method for manufacturing solar cells
AssigneeThe United States of America as represented by the Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
InventorNick Mardesich
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
The invention is a novel manufacturing method for making multi-junction solar cell circuits that addresses current problems associated with such circuits by allowing the formation of integral diodes in the cells and allows for a large number of circuits to readily be placed on a single silicon wafer substrate. The standard Ge wafer used as the base for multi-junction solar cells is replaced with a thinner layer of Ge or a II-V semiconductor material on a silicon/silicon dioxide substrate. This allows high-voltage cells with multiple multi-junction circuits to be manufactured on a single wafer, resulting in less array assembly mass and simplified power management.
Claims12
A method of making a solar cell circuit, comprising the steps of:
- providing a silicon wafer;
- forming an insulation layer directly on the silicon wafer;
- bonding a single crystal layer of a compound selected from germanium based compounds, II-IV semiconductor compounds, or III-V semiconductor compounds using plasma assisted electrostatic bonding directly to the insulation layer;
- wafer cleaving the single crystal layer to obtain a crystal layer of desired thickness and an excess layer;
- and,
- forming multi-junction layers on the insulation layer to fabricate a multi-junction solar cell circuit.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.