Researchers at the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) have outlined a nanosecond laser-assisted recycling process, known as LARS, designed to open silicon PV modules while preserving high-value silicon and silver fractions for recovery.
Conventional recycling routes such as shredding recover bulk materials like glass and aluminum efficiently but tend to fragment or contaminate the smaller, higher-value silicon and silver fractions, which the researchers said make up only a small share of a module’s mass but the bulk of its recoverable value.
The LARS process instead irradiates the module through its transparent front layers using green (532 nm) or near-infrared (1064 nm) nanosecond laser pulses, targeting the silicon cell surface directly. The TNO scientists said this weakens the bond between the cell and its encapsulant and simultaneously removes the module’s SiNₓ anti-reflective coating, thereby avoiding the dedicated HF-based SiNₓ etching step required in some downstream recovery routes.
The researchers compared the two wavelengths using ablation-threshold analysis and found that green lasers required roughly half the fluence of near-infrared lasers to achieve delamination, making green processing more energy-efficient. However, they said optimized near-infrared processing narrowed that gap considerably, and noted that near-infrared laser sources are two to three times cheaper than green sources, making near-infrared potentially more attractive on a capital-cost basis for a given processing throughput.
Following laser treatment and a subsequent wet-chemical purification step, the researchers achieved silicon purity of up to 99.998%, with a 97% recovery yield, and silver purity of 99.7%, also at a 97% yield, according to the TNO researchers. They described these results as proof of principle, noting that the recovery routes were demonstrated at laboratory scale and have not yet been optimized for industrial implementation.
The process has been tested across multiple commercial module architectures, including passivated emitter and rear cell (PERC), tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon), aluminum back surface field (Al-BSF), polymer-frontsheet, and interdigitated back contact (IBC) designs.
TNO has separately said the technology has moved beyond its exploratory phase after three years of work, with efforts now focused on scaling the process toward integration into industrial recycling chains. Mirjam Theelen, the TNO researcher who led the research project, said the technology could unlock significant value from a growing feedstock of end-of-life panels. No commercial recycling partner has yet been named.
The research comes as the European Union faces a rapidly growing volume of PV waste. A 2025 study by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre estimated cumulative PV waste volumes across the European Union’s 27 member states of 6 million metric tons (MT) to 13 million MT by 2040, rising to 21 million MT to 35 million MT by 2050, with the value of fully recovered materials potentially reaching tens of billions of euros by mid-century.
TNO’s laser-based approach is one of several under development targeting higher-value PV recycling. In May, researchers at the University of Virginia published a separate continuous-wave infrared laser method for removing backsheets from end-of-life modules without damaging the glass or silicon wafer, while the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory has separately explored femtosecond laser welding to eliminate the polymer laminates that complicate recycling in the first place. Together, the approaches illustrate ongoing research into recycling routes designed to preserve silicon, glass, and metallization in less fragmented streams than conventional shredding approaches.
The TNO scientists described their method in “LARS: Laser Assisted Recycling of Solar Modules,” which was published this month as part of the SiliconPV Conference proceedings. The findings were initially presented at the 16th International Conference on Crystalline Silicon Photovoltaics (SiliconPV 2026), held in April in Ankara, Turkey.
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