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Remanufacturing Perovskite Solar Cells and Modules- a Holistic Case Study
While perovskite photovoltaic (PV) devices are on the verge of their commercialization, promising methods to recycle or remanufacture fully-encapsulated perovskite solar cells (PSCs) and modules are still missing. Through detailed life-cycle assessment shown in this work, we identify that the majority of the greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced by re-using the glass substrate and parts of the PV cells. Based on these analytical findings, we develop a novel thermally-assisted mechanochemical approach to remove the encapsulants, the electrode and the perovskite absorber, allowing to re-use most of the device constituents for remanufacturing PSCs, which recovered nearly 90% of their initial performance. Notably, this the first experimental demonstration of remanufacturing PSCs with an encapsulant and an edge-seal, since potential perovskite solar modules must have them. This pioneering approach distinguishes itself from the ātraditionalā recycling methods demonstrated in perovskite literature previously by allowing to directly re-use bulk materials with high environmental impact. Thus, such remanufacturing strategy becomes even more favorable than recycling and it allows to save up to 33% of the moduleās global warming potential. Remarkably, this process can be universally applied to other PSC architectures, particularly nip-based ones that rely on inorganic metal oxide layers deposited on glass substrates. Finally, we demonstrate that the CO2-footprint of these remanufactured devices can become less than 30g/kWh, which is the value for state-of-the-art c-Si PV modules and can even reach 15g/kWh assuming a similar lifetime