US Patent Issued to First Solar on June 17 for "Photovoltaic devices with textured TCO layers, and methods of making TCO stacks" (Ohio, California Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 19 -- United States Patent no. 12,336,321, issued on June 17, was assigned to First Solar Inc. (Tempe, Ariz.).

"Photovoltaic devices with textured TCO layers, and methods of making TCO stacks" was invented by Paulina Bourgeois (Perrysburg, Ohio), Robert Clark-Phelps (Perrysburg, Ohio), Qi Fang (Perrysburg, Ohio), Jing Guo (Sunnyvale, Calif.), Gopal Mor (Perrysburg, Ohio) and Rui Shao (Sylvania, Ohio).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "According to the embodiments provided herein, a method for sputtering a TCO material onto a substrate includes process conditions that produce a textured topography at the interfaces of various layers. The textured topography can include an aver...