Mechanical and chemical adhesion at the encapsulant interfaces in laminated photovoltaic modules

Encapsulants are known to have a large impact on the reliability of PV modules. Use of new materials such as low temperature solder can have an impact on how the encapsulant behaves in a module throughout its lifetime. A novel test methodology is used in this work to measure the adhesion strength between the encapsulant and its interfaces. The methodology is applied to both plated as screen printed metallization, low temperature SnBiAg solder and thermally evaporated Ag. The first steps in determining the underlying physical phenomena are studied experimentally for these interfaces as they can provide input for reliability models.