TY - JOUR
T1 - A facile approach to determine the unknown refractive index (n) and extinction coefficient (k) of novel encapsulant materials used in back contact PV modules
AU - Shamim, Asma
AU - Noman, Muhammad
AU - Zubair, Muhammad
AU - Khan, Adnan Daud
AU - Saher, Saim
N1 - Generated from Scopus record by KAUST IRTS on 2023-09-20
PY - 2018/8/1
Y1 - 2018/8/1
N2 - Determining the refractive index (n) and extinction coefficient (k) of materials is of core importance in optoelectronic and photonic devices. This study demonstrates a simple yet novel method to determine n and k of unusual encapsulant materials for back contact photovoltaic (PV) modules. To avoid the problem of encapsulant browning, two non-traditional encapsulant materials, i.e., polybutadiene ionomer and thermoplastic polyolefin, are utilized as an alternative to traditionally used ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA). The n and k samples were calculated by solving the optical parameters using MATLAB code which requires transmittance and reflectance values from spectrophotometer. To validate our proposed method, glass and EVA are used as a reference. The computation of refractive index of glass and EVA has achieved an accuracy of ± 0.007 and ± 0.006, respectively. Whereas computation of extinction coefficient of glass and EVA has achieved an accuracy of ± 2.37 × 10−6 and ± 4.69 × 10−6, respectively. Thus, calculated results of n and k for glass and EVA are found in good agreement as compared to the standard values, whereas the marginal difference is within acceptable experimental error. This method can serve as a tool to find n and k of non-standard materials prior to their deployment in PV modules.
AB - Determining the refractive index (n) and extinction coefficient (k) of materials is of core importance in optoelectronic and photonic devices. This study demonstrates a simple yet novel method to determine n and k of unusual encapsulant materials for back contact photovoltaic (PV) modules. To avoid the problem of encapsulant browning, two non-traditional encapsulant materials, i.e., polybutadiene ionomer and thermoplastic polyolefin, are utilized as an alternative to traditionally used ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA). The n and k samples were calculated by solving the optical parameters using MATLAB code which requires transmittance and reflectance values from spectrophotometer. To validate our proposed method, glass and EVA are used as a reference. The computation of refractive index of glass and EVA has achieved an accuracy of ± 0.007 and ± 0.006, respectively. Whereas computation of extinction coefficient of glass and EVA has achieved an accuracy of ± 2.37 × 10−6 and ± 4.69 × 10−6, respectively. Thus, calculated results of n and k for glass and EVA are found in good agreement as compared to the standard values, whereas the marginal difference is within acceptable experimental error. This method can serve as a tool to find n and k of non-standard materials prior to their deployment in PV modules.
UR - http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00339-018-1974-x
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85050318476&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s00339-018-1974-x
DO - 10.1007/s00339-018-1974-x
M3 - Article
SN - 1432-0630
VL - 124
JO - Applied Physics A: Materials Science and Processing
JF - Applied Physics A: Materials Science and Processing
IS - 8
ER -