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Type Paper
Cite as Citation reference for the source document. Brindha V.G. Mohan, Jeyanthinath Mayandi, Joshua M. Pearce, Kottaisamy Muniasamy, and Vasu Veerapandy. Demonstration of a simple encapsulation technique for prototype silicon solar cells. Materials Letters 274 (2020), 128028. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matlet.2020.128028 open access

The impact of encapsulation on solar photovoltaic (PV) modules includes insulation and protection, which alters the device performance as a function of wavelength of incoming light. Most lab-scale PV research ignores these features, but with a promising rise in front surface spectral conversion mechanisms, methods of optical enhancement and biomimetic layers makes this oversight unacceptable. To enable encapsulation of lab-scale PV, this study evaluates a simple encapsulation method. Multi-crystalline silicon (mc-Si) wafers were encapsulated using a pouch laminator and compared with a (poly)-methyl methacrylate (PMMA) front coated cell and an unencapsulated control cell. The cell’s diffuse reflectance with the encapsulant exhibits better photon absorption in UV region, which is verified from improved external quantum efficiency. Despite the loss of a small percentage of visible photons, the electrical performances of the encapsulated cells were not affected. On the other hand, the PMMA coated cells showed an outstanding photon to electron conversion, but did not result in effective charge collection. The results show that a low-cost pouch laminate at the lab scale is an adequate method for encapsulating solar cells without overly degrading performance. In addition, for short lifetime small-scale PV applications, this method represents a means of distributed PV manufacturing.

Highlights[edit | edit source]

  • Demonstrating a labs-scale prototype pouch lamination for solar cell encapsulation.
  • Focus is on technical viability of the encapsulant for realistic testing within lab.
  • Encapsulated mc-Si cells are compared with PMMA front coated & unencapsulated cells.
  • Encapsulated device’s DRS exhibit photon absorption in UV which is verified by EQE.
  • The PMMA coated cells showed an outstanding photon to electron conversion.

Keywords[edit | edit source]

	 encapsulant, PMMA, lamination, silicon solar cells, surface coating, Photovoltaic

See also[edit | edit source]

In the News[edit | edit source]

FA info icon.svg Angle down icon.svg Page data
Authors Joshua M. Pearce
License CC-BY-SA-4.0
Language English (en)
Translations French
Related 1 subpages, 5 pages link here
Impact 386 page views
Created May 22, 2020 by Joshua M. Pearce
Modified February 23, 2024 by Maintenance script
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