Degradation Behavior of Eutectic and Pb-free Solder Plated Ribbon in Crystalline Silicon Photovoltaic Module

Usage of heavy metal element (Pb, Hg and Cd etc.) in electronic devices have been restricted due to the environmental banning of the European Union, such as WEEE and RoHS. Therefore, it is needed to develop the Pb-free solder plated ribbon in photovoltaic (PV) module. This study described that degradation characteristics of PV module under damp heat (DH, $85^{\circ}C$ and 85% R.H.) condition test for 1,000 h. Solar cell ribbons were utilized to hot dipping plate with Pb-free solder alloys. Two types of Pb-free solder plated ribbons, Sn-3.0Ag-0.5Cu (SAC305) and Sn-48Bi-2Ag, and an electroless Sn-40Pb solder hot dipping plated ribbon as a reference sample were prepared to evaluate degradation characteristics. To detect the degradation of PV module with the eutectic and Pb-free solder plated ribbons, I-V curve, electro-luminescence (EL) and cross-sectional SEM analysis were carried out. DH test results show that the reason of maximum power (Pm) drop was mainly due to the decrease fill factor (FF). It was attributed to the crack or oxidation of interface between the cell and the ribbon. Among PV modules with the eutectic and Pb-free solder plated ribbon, the PV module with SAC305 ribbon relatively showed higher stability after DH test than the case of PV module with Sn-40Pb and Sn-48Bi-2Ag solder plated ribbons.

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