Effective use of electrically conductive adhesives in photovoltaics
Electrically conductive adhesives have advanced significantly in a variety of areas in recent years. The comparatively straightforward processing of the adhesives and the possibility of curing them during the lamination of the modules without a further process step, is a decisive advantage over other contacting methods. However, not only the adhesives, but also the entire bonding processes are constantly striving for a higher performance. In photovoltaics, adhesive technology has been established particularly for the connection of temperature-sensitive heterojunction cells. According to the current state of the art, thin-film cells have one of the highest levels of efficiency, but they cannot be conventionally soldered at over 200 °C. With advanced adhesive technology, the process temperatures today can be kept below 180 °C, which means that the temperature-sensitive heterolayers are kept undamaged. Additionally, the thermomechanical load is substantially lower, which reduces the stresses in the material and thus the risk of microcracks and fractions in the cells.
The advantages of electrically conductive adhesives from Polytec PT can now also be transferred to crystalline photovoltaics, in which the cell connectors are still commonly soldered onto printed busbars. In several research projects in which Polytec PT participated, it has been scientifically proven that our electrically conductive adhesives are also ideally suited for long-term permanent contacting of crystalline solar cells and thus have several advantages over soldering, such as, the significantly lower process temperature as well as the substantially reduced environmental impact due to the elimination of lead in PV modules.
Our electrically conductive adhesives are largely based on epoxy resin systems, which are available either as a two-component system or premixed and frozen as a one-component variant. Many of our products can be cured at moderate temperatures or simply at room temperature.
The Polytec PT offers you a wide range of electrically conductive adhesives suitable for all common application techniques. Starting from conductive silver adhesives for manual application in prototype or sample production up to fully automated assembly processes with adhesive application by dispensing, screen printing, jetting or stamping.
Benefit from our wide range of expertise in electrically conductive bonding. A contact, that conducts!