Effect of crosslinking on EVA-based encapsulant properties during photovoltaic module fabrication process

Abstract

The key objective of this work is to create a comprehensive comparison between experimental analysis methods for detecting crosslinking reaction in EVA encapsulant material during PV module fabrication process. Several analytical methods, spanning from classical gel content extraction measurements over different thermo-analytic and mechanical approaches to spectroscopic analysis as Thermally Stimulated Current (TSC), have been investigated as to their ability to reveal the crosslinking state of ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA). The basic results show that TSC complements perfectly other thermal analysis methods like as Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC), Dynamic Mechanical Thermal Analysis (DMTA) to determine fundamental properties of EVA such as molecular mobility characteristics and also to monitor the crosslinking reaction. Exothermic peak as revealed by DSC analysis can be used to estimate the crosslinking rate of EVA during PV module encapsulation process as fast quality control test.