Investigation of the thermo-physical properties of poly(methyl methacrylate)-based Plexiglass to improve the performance of solar cells

Abstract

This paper presents investigations of the thermophysical properties of a commercial PMMA-based Plexiglass material for use in photovoltaic applications to improve the performance of solar cells. The optical, infrared and thermal measurements were performed on the PMMA sample. We noticed an optical band gap value of about 4 eV which is similar to that reported in the literature. The glass transition temperature and the peak temperature of PMMA increase with the heating rate. Thus, a linear behavior was presented for the glass transition temperature, whose Tg shifts to a higher temperature due to a spreading effect; the Tg increases from 101.7 °C to 103.5 °C when the heating rate increases from 5 °C.min−1 to 20 °C.min−1, respectively. In addition, the refractive index obtained by Kramers-Kronig has a similar value to that obtained by the classical formula as well as that reported in the literature; the average value of the refractive index is about 1.51. Direct measurements of transmittance and reflectance have been reported in a wide range of infrared wavenumbers to determine radiative properties.