Silver is one of the most valuable and scarce materials used in photovoltaic manufacturing hence attracts much attention to be recycled when these solar cells enter end-of-life. Here, we demonstrate a novel method for rapid recycling of front silver metallisation from decommissioned silicon photovoltaic devices. The externally applied electric field accelerates the dissolution of silver into the recycling bath and drives the simultaneous deposition of silver on a recycling object. This single-step recycling method can recover more than 75% silver from these retired devices within a short time. Recycled silver has a high purity (> 99%) to be reused in the industry. Furthermore, life cycle assessment results show that this accelerated process has low environmental impacts, because it uses low quantities of chemical and electricity. These impacts can be further decreased by recirculating the chemical and improving the electric current efficiency. The low-impact silver recycling process presented in this paper is very simple and time-efficient thereby has a great potential for commercial PV recycling applications.
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