Apple has been granted two solar-related patents by the US Patent & Trademark Office.

Patent number 8039360 involves a method of assembling integrated circuit components. The disclosure identified as methods of mounting integrated circuits, including solar cells, to a substrate wherein the circuits are mounted prior to being singulated into discrete die. Once the semiconductor die sites or other circuits are formed on a wafer, the wafer will be attached, either whole, or divided into one or more multi-die site wafer segments, to a substrate.

This attachment may be by conventional surface mount technology, for example. After such mounting, the individual die sites on the wafer segments will be singulated to form discrete die already mounted to the supporting substrate. The singulation may be preferably performed by laser dicing of the wafer segments. The inventors are Bradley Spare, Michael D. Hillman and Gregory Tice.

Patent number 804465. An apparatus and methods for harnessing external light to illuminate a display screen of an electronic device are provided. The display screen may be illuminated using a light harness, a reflector, a translucent surface, or any combination thereof. The light harness may be cylindrical or hexahedral. The light harness may be coupled to an external light input or a collector. The reflector may be repositioned toward or away from the display screen to reflect external light toward the display screen.

The translucent surface may allow external light to pass through it to illuminate the display screen. The translucent surface may protect the rear face of the display screen, or the rear face of the display screen may itself be translucent. Peter Mahowald is the inventor.

-- Dennis Sellers