CIGS sputtering targets fabricated from reclaimed materials

The development of techniques to sputter Cu(In,Ga)Se₂ (CIGS) thin films from a single quaternary target has the potential to make industrial scale fabrication of large area thin-film photovoltaic (PV) devices possible due to sputtering´s well established ability to deposit uniform films over large areas. However, sputtering has the disadvantage that much of the target material becomes waste. Material is preferentially consumed from a “racetrack” that forms a ring on the target. Once this racetrack consumes enough material to reach the backing plate the target must be replaced even though there is still plenty of unused material in the other regions of the target. In this work we present a technique to reclaim the material in the spent targets and use them to make new targets that produce PV devices with equal efficiencies as devices made from freshly batched targets.