A promis­ing area of appli­ca­tion for the shock wave process is the recy­cling of com­pos­ite mate­ri­als and com­pos­ites such as pho­to­volta­ic mod­ules or car­bon fiber rein­forced plas­tics. In addi­tion to the sep­a­ra­tion of the mate­ri­als into their pure indi­vid­ual com­po­nents, ImpulsTec’s selec­tive frag­men­ta­tion tech­nol­o­gy offers even more effi­cient pos­si­bil­i­ties of recy­cling, name­ly the “func­tion­al recy­cling”. The lat­ter indi­cates a shift from a pure ele­ment / mate­r­i­al dri­ven recy­cling towards a removal of intact com­pos­ites and com­plete sub­struc­tures that are reused in the orig­i­nal appli­ca­tion or pro­duc­tion process.

The selec­tiv­i­ty achiev­able with the shock wave frag­men­ta­tion process depends on the mechan­i­cal and acoustic prop­er­ties of the com­pos­ite mate­ri­als. The fact that each mate­r­i­al can be non-destruc­tive­ly recov­ered allows new recy­cling approach­es to be imag­ined, away from a pure mate­r­i­al recy­cling towards a func­tion­al recycling.

One pos­si­ble appli­ca­tion of the shock wave process is the recy­cling of solar mod­ules, allow­ing both the semi­con­duc­tor mate­r­i­al and the high-qual­i­ty front glass to be recov­ered while meet­ing the high puri­ty require­ments asso­ci­at­ed with these materials.

The shock wave frag­men­ta­tion from Impul­sTec is ide­al­ly suit­ed for detach­ing thin coat­ings from sub­strates. Depend­ing on the mechan­i­cal integri­ty of their mate­ri­als, some sub­strates will remain large­ly struc­tural­ly intact, while oth­ers will also be frag­ment­ed. The min­i­mum thick­ness of the detach­able lay­er depends on the com­bi­na­tion of mate­ri­als and the phys­i­cal prop­er­ties of the objects to which they are bound. In sev­er­al research and cus­tomer projects it was pos­si­ble to detach lay­er thick­ness­es down to less than 10 µm using the shock wave method.