The growth and characterization of tunneling GaAs homojunctions and GaAs‐AlGaAs heterojunctions by molecular beam epitaxy for use as optically transparent interconnects in GaAs and AlGaAs solar cells is described. GaAs tunneling interconnects have been achieved with conductances of 300 A/cm2‐V at 0.050 V, and p‐AlxGa1−xAs/n‐GaAs heterojunction structures withxup to 0.4 have been grown which have characteristics comparable to GaAs interconnects. Thin interconnects, 1000 A˚ total thickness, have also been fabricated with conductances comparable to thicker junctions. The effect of dopant diffusion was found to be minimal at the 580 °C junction growth temperature, but annealing these tunnel junctions at 650 °C for several minutes caused diffusion of about 100 A˚ distance.