Thermal stability of slow and fast cure EVA encapsulant material for photovoltaic module manufacturing process

Ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) is a copolymer encapsulant used as an interlayer in the industrial photovoltaic module encapsulation process. EVA serves to provide the functions of structural support, electrical isolation, physical isolation/protection and thermal conduction for the solar cell circuit. This paper focuses on thermal properties of slow and fast cure EVA encapsulant material. Phase transition and thermal stability parameters of uncured EVA materials have been studied by employing thermo gravimetric analysis, thermal differential analysis and differential scanning calorimetric. EVA fast cure encapsulant material exhibits superior thermal stability in the range of operational cell temperature.