Caveat: I am a software guy, so anything I say here might be incredibly stupid...
With all those diodes you could make the worlds most ridiculous A2D converter
Use an op-amp to boost the input up to a pretty high voltage
Then in parallel you have 1 diode, 2 diodes in series, 3 diodes in series, 4 diodes in series ...
Each time the output of the op-amp goes up by another diode drop (0.6ish V usually, right?) another string of diodes lights up.
To make a n-bit a2d in this way would require (2^n)-1 strings. Using Gauss's summation we see that
((2^N)-1)(2^N)/2 = 2^(2N-1)-2^(N-1)
So to make a
1 bit a2d requires 1 diode,
2bit requires 6,
3bit requires 28
4bit requires 120
5bit requires 496
6bit requires 2016
7bit requires 8128
8bit requires 32640