Inductive heating for photovoltaic module recycling and near-complete component recovery

The rapid expansion of photovoltaic (PV) deployment is expected to generate substantial volumes of end-of-life (EoL) PV modules, given their typical lifetimes of 20–30 years. A key recycling challenge is separating polymeric encapsulants from crystalline silicon solar cells without breaking the cells or leaving polymer residues on their surfaces. Here, we present an induction heating–assisted delamination method that rapidly separates ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) encapsulants from silicon cells without complex mechanical systems or hazardous solvents. Heating the cells at rates exceeding 28 °C s⁻¹ induces localized EVA decomposition at the cell–encapsulant interface without degrading the bulk EVA layer, enabling residue-free cell separation within tens of seconds. We also propose a modified glass-to-glass module design to further enhance recyclability and facilitate the recovery of individual components. The process recovers over 99.8% of module components by mass, including the EVA encapsulant, offering a rapid, scalable, and high-yield strategy for recycling EoL silicon PV modules. The growing number of end-of-life photovoltaic modules poses a major recycling challenge, particularly the removal of encapsulants without damaging silicon solar cells. Here, the authors develop an inductive heating approach that rapidly enables residue-free separation of encapsulants from silicon solar cells and achieves over 99.8% recovery of photovoltaic module components.