Study of High Temperature Crack Initiation and Growth in Light Capturing Ribbon (LCR) PV Module Interconnection

The ribbon interconnection between solar cells (used for collecting current from solar cells) is a key PV module component and it highly affects the reliability of PV module as interconnection failure can lead to PV module performance. Light Capturing Ribbon (LCR) is a new type of interconnection to increase the efficiency of PV modules by reflecting the incident sun rays from the interconnection ribbon to the cell surface. This paper studies a comparison of the crack initiation and growth in the PV module interconnection due to the high-temperature manufacturing process between Light Capturing Ribbon (LCR) and Conventional Ribbon (CR). Extended Finite Element Method (XFEM) in ABAQUS software is employed to find the Crack Initiation Temperatures (CIT) and the Crack Growth Rate (CGR) for different configurations of PV module interconnection designs. The optimum solder, silver, and copper thickness for LCR interconnection are recognized as 20µm, 40µm, and 125-187.5µm, respectively, where this configuration experiences smaller cracks in the solder joint material rather than CR interconnection with the same cross-section area.