Chapter 14 - Recycled silicon waste as a sustainable energy material

Abstract

Nowadays, the entire semiconductor industry is implementing silicon-based architectures. Because of this growth in the silicon market, cumulative global electronic waste has reached millions of tons produced each year. Nevertheless, increasing waste can lead to environmental issues reducing the quality of human life, but it opens opportunities to create strategies such as open-loop recycling of silicon semiconductors. In this chapter, the development of optimized electronic devices dependent on physical parameters of p-n junctions and junction transistors for energy conversion in high frequencies (well known as radiofrequency (RF)) from basic operating modes takes advantage of its uncommon conduction mechanism for sensing both voltage and current signals. Hence, electronic parts of modules for energy conversion using recycled silicon waste from outdated components of switching-mode power supplies can be an environmentally gentle solution, which could be introduced in circuit configurations inspired by the Internet of Things as near-field energy sources.