Multijunction solar cell fabrication and encapsulation

Question

How are multi junction solar cells are fabricated and encapsulated?

Answer

Assuming you are talking about III-V multi-junction solar cells, they are usually deposited by Metal-Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition (MOCVD). Sometimes, Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) is used, especially in a research environment (where throughput is not critical).

The article wikipedia Multi-junction solar cell has a high-level overview about the choice of materials in a high-efficiency multi-junction solar cells.

Encapsulation is highly dependent on the use cases (1-sun vs. concentrated PV, terrestrial vs. space, etc) that it is hard to have one encapsulation that satisfies all the requirements.

(Original answered on quora: How are multi junction solar cells are fabricated and encapsulated?)