The scientific visit of CRTSE team during May 2023, in the headquarters of UCLouvain coordinator, enabled joint activities in Europe involving all participants. Indeed, the presence of Tunisian partners that also attended the SIREVIVAL internal workshop during 16-17 May, 2023, co-organized by the Belgian and French partners, offered to the African participants a deep perspective on current activities related to recycling technologies of Si-based materials in Belgium and France.

The joint working session at UCLouvain of Belgian and Algerian partners was centered on different processes for reclaiming Si wafers and obtaining Si powders from recovered Si cells in Algeria. The recovered Si cells from end-of-life (EoL) photovoltaic panels were transferred from CRTSE to UCLouvain to prepare the secondary materials enabling the construction of renewable energy devices with recycled (upcycled) elements, especially, micro-supercapacitors. The obtained reclaimed Si wafers were subsequently transferred to the French partner. The members of the CRTSE and UCLouvain teams conducted experiments with state-of-the fabrication and characterization tools available at ICTEAM, UCLouvain, for batch processing and establishing the mechanical and electronic properties of the reclaimed Si wafers.

The Institute for Information and Communication Technologies, Electronics and Applied Mathematics (ICTEAM) hosts the WELCOME and WINFAB technological platforms of UCLouvain, Belgium. In brief, WINFAB is a technological platform dedicated to micro- and nano-fabrication and WELCOME is a state-of-the-art technological platform providing multidisciplinary tools in the field of electrical and electromagnetic characterization.

Dr. Diego Jaramillo (left) and Dr. Sabiha Anas Boussaa (right) are analysing the lots of recovered Si cells to be processed in WINFAB (UCLouvain), Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.