Ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) is still the dominating material for the encapsulation of solar cells. During PV module lamination a three dimensional network is formed by chemical cross-linking of the polymer chains in order to increase the thermal stability of the material and to prevent the material from melting within application relevant temperatures up to 100 °C. The cross-linking reaction is the time-determining step of PV module lamination, which is discontinuous and can take up to 30min, depending on the EVA type. The main objective of this paper is to obtain a comprehensive understanding of thermo-mechanical material behavior during the PV module lamination process and to build a base for the optimization of the PV module manufacturing process. The presented results will demonstrate that Dynamic Mechanical Analysis is a valuable and reliable characterization method for the investigation of the curing behavior of EVA for solar cell encapsulation. DMA in shear mode allows a continuous measurement of the thermo-mechanical properties even in the molten state and therefore an in-situ monitoring of the cross-linking reaction. Whereas using temperature scans on partially cured EVA films a determination of the state of cross-linking is possible, isothermal scans on uncured samples enable the investigation of curing kinetics of EVA. Based on an enhanced knowledge of the cross-linking reaction material related process parameter optimization potentials of the PV module lamination process can be identified and optimum processing temperature ranges and minimum cross-linking times can be derived.