Question: If oxygen or water were to get into the glove box what exactly would happen?

Edward Bovill answered on 13 Mar 2013:

This has happened on occasion and it’s not usually very good!

The glovebox is a very complex piece of equipment and the environment inside is very carefully controlled by some clever machinery. The amount of water and oxygen is controlled so there are fewer than 1 atoms of oxygen/water in the atmosphere for every million atoms in there (on average)!

The reason I try and keep water and oxygen out is that the plastics I use to make my solar panels absorb it very quickly, and when they do the performance of the finished solar panel is much worse for it. Virtually everyone who works on these plastic solar panels has to work inside a glovebox because of this.

One of the main research goals of my PhD is to work out ways to make these solar panels outside of the glovebox, in regular air, and try and keep the same performance as those made inside the glovebox. It’s going to be hard work!