USA – IBM solar panels from silicon waste

Techtree reports that IBM has developed a new process for repurposing scrap silicon wafers from its chip manufacturing operations for use in energy-producing solar panels.



Typically, Microsoft discards 3 million wafers every year, each of which contains some portion of IBM‘‘s chip designs. The new process uses a specialized pattern removal technique to recycle those thin discs of silicon material used to imprint patterns that make finished semiconductor chips for computers, mobile phones, video games, and other consumer electronics into a form used to manufacture silicon-based solar panels.



The company said that these repurposed wafers will be available either for reuse in internal manufacturing calibration as ‘‘monitor wafers‘‘ or for sale to the solar cell industry, which must meet the growing demand for the same silicon material to produce photovoltaic cells for solar panels.



IBM and others in the industry use silicon wafers both as the starting material for manufacturing microelectronic products, as well as to monitor and control the myriad steps in the manufacturing process.



According to the Semiconductor Industry Association, 250,000 wafers are started per day across the industry worldwide. IBM estimates that up to 3.3 percent of these started wafers are scrapped. In the course of the year, this amounts to approximately 3 million discarded wafers. Because the wafers contain intellectual property, most cannot be sent to outside vendors to reclaim, therefore they‘‘re crushed and sent to landfills, or melted down and resold.



Besides, the new wafer reclamation process generates an overall energy savings of up to 90 percent. This is because repurposing scrap means that IBM no longer has to buy the usual volume of net new wafers to meet manufacturing needs.