Recycle and reuse of substrates and the deposit materials

Abstract

The recovery and reuse of substrates such as indium tin oxide (ITO) and silicon along with the deposited materials has been attempted for the first time. It has been possible to exfoliate the oxide nanostructured films by a conducting polymer named poly-(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly-(styrenesulphonic acid)(PEDOT:PSS), leaving the substrates unaltered, so they can be used several times without any degradation of the material properties. One of the by-products is the retrieval of a flexible and free-standing inorganic–organic hybrid structure, which on annealing in an Ar atmosphere recovers the oxide materials from the hybrid structure.