A systematically integrated recycling and upgrading technology for waste crystalline silicon photovoltaic module

Efficient resource recovery and reutilization are important for overcoming the immense challenges associated with waste photovoltaic module management and the limited raw material supplies, but these processes are significantly impeded by the low recycling efficiency and poor profitability of current technologies. Here, an integrated crystalline silicon cell regeneration technique is proposed by skillfully combining the sequential processes of nondestructive silicon cell recovery, wafer prepurification, one-step ultrapurification and texturing using metal-assisted chemical etching (MACE), and intrasystem reutilization of recovered materials. High-purity and intact silicon wafers are successfully recovered, and various anti-reflection textures including the intriguing dual-scale micro/nano structure are controllably constructed simultaneously by applying a single-step MACE process. The favorable thickness (165 μm), resistivity (1.02–2.28 Ω•cm) and carrier lifetime (1.12–2.47 μs) of the recovered silicon wafers, along with their ultralow reflectivity (5–15%) compared with commercial silicon wafers, make them excellent viable options for high-efficient photovoltaic module production. A rough economic assessment reveals that this integrated strategy presents a lower production cost than that of a conventional recovery process or the price of silicon wafer from industrial production process, and the fully recovered Al frame, tempered glass, Cu ribbons, and high-purity Ag and Al powders can be reused within the system for solar cell regeneration and as catalysts for MACE, resulting in economic viability and high resource sustainability.