Investigating the Crosslinking, Degradation, and Adhesion Behavior of Photovoltaic Encapsulants Under Thermal Accelerated Aging

Degradation of photovoltaic (PV) module encapsulant characteristics that lead to mechanical embrittlement and delamination remains a cause of failure in solar installations. A multiscale reliability model connecting the encapsulant mechanical and fracture properties to the degraded molecular structure and interfacial bonding to adjacent solar cell and glass substrates was previously published. The model, developed primarily for poly(ethylene-co-vinyl acetate) acetate (EVA) encapsulants, remains to be experimentally validated. Determining the degradation and crosslinking kinetics of alternative encapsulants, such as polyolefin elastomer (POE) and EVA/POE/EVA composites (EPE), can generalize the model. In this work, we subject fully cured EVA, POE, and EPE encapsulants to accelerated thermal aging to determine how high temperatures impact reaction kinetics. An increase in gel content (crosslinking) and decrease in crystallinity of the encapsulants under hot-aerobic (90 °C, 22% RH) and hot-anaerobic (90 °C, sealed in N₂ air) aging were observed, even in the absence of UV and crosslinking initiators. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR)-attenuated total reflectance analysis showed insignificant encapsulant degradation, demonstrating the critical role of UV and moisture in accelerating degradation. Adhesion testing performed on coupon-level specimens (cell/encapsulant/glass laminates) showed decreases in adhesion energy, G_c, from 5000 h of hot-dry (90 °C, ∼1% RH) and hot-humid (90 °C, 60% RH) aging. POE coupons demonstrated the best stability, followed by EPE then EVA. For EVA and POE, hot-humid aged coupons experienced a larger decrease in G_c due to enhanced hydrolytic degradation. Hot-dry aging condition demonstrated that thermal degradation of the interface could be significant even if the encapsulant experiences negligible degradation in the absence of UV and elevated humidity.