Observation of polymer degradation processes in photovoltaic modules via luminescence detection

The estimation of PV-modules lifetime facilitates the further development and helps to lower risks for producers and investors. One base for this extensive testing work is the knowledge of the degradation kinetics of encapsulating polymer materials. Besides ethylen-vinylacetate copolymer (EVA), which is the prevalent material for encapsulation, new materials like Poly-Vinyl-Butyral (PVB), and thermoplastic Poly-Urethan (TPU) become available and need the assessment of their properties and the durability impact. In this context is it very important to identify the extent of degradation caused by different parameters in order to identify the determining factor of polymer degradation as well as potential interactions between different degradation processes. To simulate long time degeneration processes accelerated aging under damp-heat and high-UV conditions was performed on different EVA, TPU, and PVB samples. In this paper we report first results on measuring fluorescence spectra from different encapsulation materials after accelerated ageing in dependence on time and aging procedure. Our investigations clearly demonstrate that it is possible to follow damp-heat and UV induced aging processes of different polymers used in PV-modules as encapsulation materials by luminescence detection.