Optimization of thermo-mechanical reliability of solder joints in crystalline

silicon solar cell assembly

Response to Editor:

We thank you so much for the opportunity to further improve our paper. We have addressed
the issues raised by the reviewers as follows:

Response to Reviewer ♯1:

Reviewer's comments
1. It is with extreme regret that I have to
recommend rejection of the paper. Both
reviewers clearly stated that the FE modelling
results with the solder layer being one mesh
element thick are unreliable, but the authors
have failed to clearly and explicitly address this
issue. The new figure 3 is worse than the
original and only seems to hide the
shortcomings of the original figure rather than
address them.
Authors' response
As mentioned in our previous response,
we carried out a mesh sensitivity study to
enable the determination of appropriate
mesh size for accurate simulation results.
Please find below the response to
Reviewer #2, a summary of the Mesh
Sensitivity Study carried. The study
provided a basis for the improved results
reported in the revised manuscript. The
authors are of the opinion that the mesh
size used is adequate.

Response to Reviewer ♯2:

Reviewer's comments
1. 3.2.3 Loads and boundary conditions, should
not be under section 3.2 Material and their
properties.
So section 3.2.3 should be changed to 3.3,
which is parallel with 3.2.
2. Authors added more references, the reference
number and citation in the text should be
carefully used and make sure that they are
consistent.
e.g reference 23, 24, 25 in the original
manuscript now are changing to 27, 28, 29 in
the revision, respectively. But in the revision,
Fig.6 …..[23]. [23] should be changed to [27].
In section 4.1 [27] should be [28], [28] should
be [29]. Please carefully check other citation in
the revision.
3. Section 4: Optimization. Please modify to
other section name: like Results and discussion.
Authors' response
The authors fully agree with your
comments and have changed section
3.2.3 to 3.3.
Thank you for your close observation of
the references. The errors were an
oversight. All the errors mentioned have
been corrected. In addition, all the other
references were checked to ensure there
are no more errors.
Section 4 has been modified to Results
and discussion as suggested.

Mesh sensitivity study

The accuracy of simulation results depends on mesh density as earlier mentioned by the two
reviewers. This necessitated mesh sensitivity study to investigate the effect of element size on
simulation results. Model 1 shown in Table 4 of the manuscript was chosen for the mesh
sensitivity study. Three geometric models were built with the same dimensions but meshed
with different mesh sizes. Presented in Table1 are parameters of the three geometric models
with mesh element size of 0.00085m, 0.0012m and 0.0017m and named Fine, Medium and
Coarse respectively.

Table 1 Parameters of models for mesh sensitivity study

Model IMC thickness Solder joint Solder joint Solder joint Mesh element
name (µm) thickness (µm) thickness (µm) vol. (mm3) size (m)
Fine 1 20 1000 1.56 0.00085
Medium 1 20 1000 1.56 0.00120
Coarse 1 20 1000 1.56 0.00170

The meshed models are shown in Fig. 1. From the figure as well as from Table 1, it can be
observed that Fine model has smallest mesh element size while Coarse model has the largest
mesh element size.

(a)
 (b)

(c)

Figure 1. Meshed models of crystalline Si solar cell assemblies showing:

(a) Fine model (b) Medium model (c) Coarse
The effect of mesh density on the solder joints in the models are determined by simulating the
three models and obtaining their creep strain energy. The volume-averaged method was used
to compute the creep strain energy densities. Results of creep strain energy density (W acc) for
the models are presented in Table 2. An observation of Table 2 shows that Fine model has the
least accumulated strain energy density while Coarse model has the highest accumulated
strain energy density. The results of solder joint strain energy density are used to compute
fatigue life of the solder joint in terms of cycles to failure. Equation 2 in the manuscript was
used for the computation of cycles to failure and the predicted fatigue lives of the three
models were obtained. The predicted fatigue lives of the three models are also presented in
Table 2. The results indicated that predicted fatigue life for Fine, Medium and Coarse models
are 33587, 15317 and 8597 cycles to failure respectively. In addition, Fine model consumed
the largest amount of computing time of 101719 seconds while Coarse model consumed the
least time of 22068 seconds.

Table 2 Creep strain energy density and predicted life for meshed models

Model Mesh Wacc Predicted fatigue Computing time

name element size (m) (mJ/mm3) life (cycles) (s)
Fine 0.00085 0.01567 33587 101719.000
Medium 0.0012 0.03436 15317 39287.000
Coarse 0.0017 0.06122 8597 22068.000

Furthermore, the predicted fatigue life of the Medium model is 15317 cycles to failure which
is close to the expected 13688 cycles to failure (25 years) for PV modules. Based on these
findings, the mesh size of the Medium model was chosen. Accordingly, the parameters and
mesh density of Medium model was used for Model 1 as can be observed in Table 4 in the
manuscript. Moreover, the accumulated strain energy density of Medium model is the same
as that of the Model 1 as presented in Table 5 in the manuscript. Therefore, the authors
believe the mesh size used was adequate as the results obtained in the study were within the
expected range.