Recovery of Silicon Wafers from End-of-Life Silicon-Based Solar Cells

Abstract

Silicon wafer is the main component of silicon-based solar cells which carries around sixty percent of the cell cost. Silicon wafer manufacturing is the most energy-consumed process compared to other materials, thus, discovering free silicon wafer recourses saves the environment and increases sustainable development. This work extracted the silicon wafers from the end-of-life (EoL) cells in the laboratory which were already forgone after those cells have been studied. The experiment has been started by submerging the full cells into the solution of HNO3, then in the concentrated H3PO4 followed by cleaning in NaOH and DI water. After the etching process, the full pure silicon wafers have been obtained with similar properties to the origin wafers before fabricating. The obtained wafers have been investigated using SEM and EDS characterizations and found that they have potential properties as a semiconductor and are worth trying in other optoelectronic applications.