Material behaviourThermal expansion behavior of solar cell encapsulation materials

The object of this paper is to determine the thermal expansion behavior of nine different encapsulants in order to identify possible deficiencies in production processes and allow for the optimization of the process parameters. High dimensional stability of the encapsulant is of great importance in photovoltaic (PV) module production to avoid problems during lamination and/or in application. For this purpose, the samples were heated twice in a thermo-mechanical analyzer (TMA) in tensile mode, and the coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) over temperature was evaluated. To get additional information about transition temperatures of the encapsulants, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) measurements were made. The TMA results for most samples showed anisotropic behavior which was eliminated after the first heating run. Three samples showed shrinkage with subsequent increased thermal expansion as well as anisotropic behavior. It could be shown that knowing the thermal expansion behavior of the solar cell encapsulants is highly relevant for the PV module lamination process, and Thermo-Mechanical Analysis proved to be a suitable method to evaluate and also for quality control of solar cell encapsulation films.