Encapsulant Materials and Their Adoption in Photovoltaic Modules: A Brief Review

Nadka Tz. Dintcheva (), Elisabetta Morici and Claudio Colletti
Additional contact information
Nadka Tz. Dintcheva: Dipartimento di Ingegneria, Università di Palermo, Viale delle Scienze, Ed. 6, 90128 Palermo, Italy
Elisabetta Morici: Dipartimento di Ingegneria, Università di Palermo, Viale delle Scienze, Ed. 6, 90128 Palermo, Italy
Claudio Colletti: 3SUN-Enel Green Power SpA Contrada Blocco Torrazze, Zona Industriale Catania, 95121 Catania, Italy

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 12, 1-13

Abstract: In the last two decades, the continuous, ever-growing demand for energy has driven significant development in the production of photovoltaic (PV) modules. A critical issue in the module design process is the adoption of suitable encapsulant materials and technologies for cell embedding. Adopted encapsulants have a significant impact on module efficiency, stability, and reliability. In addition, to ensure the unchanged performance of PV modules in time, the encapsulant materials must be selected properly. The selection of encapsulant materials must maintain a good balance between the encapsulant performance in time and costs, related to materials production and technologies for cells embedding. However, the encapsulants must ensure excellent isolation of active photovoltaic elements from the environment, preserving the PV cells against humidity, oxygen, and accidental damage that may compromise the PV module’s function. This review provides an overview of different encapsulant materials, their main advantages and disadvantages in adoption for PV production, and, in relation to encapsulant technologies used for cell embedding, additives and the interaction of these materials with other PV components.

Keywords: PV modules; encapsulant materials; cost-performance balance; cells preservation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/12/9453/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/12/9453/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:12:p:9453-:d:1169395

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().