A numerical study on the creep damage in soldered interconnects in c-Si solar photovoltaic cells has been conducted using equivalent creep strain, accumulated creep strain and accumulated creep energy density methods. The study used data from outdoor weathering of photovoltaic (PV) modules over a three-year period (2012–2014) to produce temperature cycle profiles that served as thermal loads and boundary conditions for the investigation of the soldered interconnects’ thermo-mechanical response when exposed to real-world conditions. A test region average (TRA) temperature cycle determined in a previous study for the 2012–2014 data was also used. The appropriate constitutive models of constituent materials forming a typical solar cell were utilized to generate accurate material responses to evaluate the damage from the thermal cycles. This study modeled two forms of soldered interconnections: Sn60Pb40 (SnPb) and Sn3.8Ag0.7Cu (Pb-free). The results of the damage analysis of the interconnections generated from the thermal cycle loads using accumulated creep strain method showed that the Pb-free solder interconnection recorded greater damage than that of the SnPb-solder interconnection for the TRA, 2012, 2013 and 2014 temperature cycles. The percentage changes from SnPb to Pb-free were 57.96%, 43.61%, 44.87% and 45.43%, respectively. This shows significant damage to the Pb-free solder under the TRA conditions. Results from the accumulated creep energy density (ACED) method showed a percentage change of 71.4% (from 1.3573 × 10⁵ J/mm³ to 2.3275 × 10⁵ J/mm³) in accumulated creep energy density by replacing SnPb-solder with Pb-free solder interconnection during the TRA thermal cycle. At the KNUST test site in Kumasi, Ghana, the findings show that Sn60Pb40 solder interconnections are likely to be more reliable than Pb-free solder interconnections. The systematic technique employed in this study would be useful to the thermo-mechanical reliability research community. The study also provides useful information to PV design and manufacturing engineers for the design of robust PV modules.

C-Si solar cell interconnection damages from thermal cycles emanate from cumulative damage contributions from the various load steps in a typical thermal cycle. In general, a typical thermal cycle involves five thermal load steps, namely: 1st cold dwell, ramp-up, hot dwell, ramp-down, and 2nd cold dwell. To predict the contributions of each of these load steps to creep damage in soldered interconnections, each of the respective load steps needs to be profiled to accurately fit a function capable of predicting the damage contributions from a given number of thermal cycles. In this study, a field thermal cycle profile generated from in situ thermal cyclings at a test site in Kumasi, a hot humid region of sub-Saharan Africa, is used to predict damage in solar cell interconnections from accumulated creep energy density using finite element analysis (FEA). The damage was assessed for two different solder formulations, namely: Pb₆₀Sn₄₀ and Sn_3.8Ag_0.7Cu (lead-free). The results from the FEA simulations show that the cooling (ramp-down) load steps accounted for the highest accumulated creep energy density (ACED) damage in solder interconnections. The ramp-up load steps followed this closely. The cumulative contributions of the two load steps accounted for 78% and 88% of the total damage per cycle in the Pb₆₀Sn₄₀ and Sn_3.8Ag_0.7Cu solder interconnections, respectively. Furthermore, a study of the damage profiles from each of the five load steps revealed that each of the damage functions from the various load steps is a step function involving the first two thermal cycles, on one hand, and the remaining 10 thermal cycles on the other hand. The damage from the first two thermal cycles can be predicted from a logarithmic function, whereas the damage from the remaining 10 thermal cycles is predicted using six-order polynomial functions. The ACED results computed from the damage functions are in close agreement with the results from the FEA simulation. The functions generated provide useful relations for the prediction of the life (number of cycles to failure) of solder interconnections in solar cells. The systematic approach used in this study can be repeated for other test sites to generate damage functions for the prediction of the life of c-Si PV cells with SnPb and lead-free solder interconnections.