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The material itself is not the problem I’m concerned about. The metal gets doped and transformed into configurations that could be hard to be unmade.
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A 1 square meter solar panel that weighs around 10kg contains under half a kg of actual doped silicon photovoltaic cells, with the remaining >95% being mainly aluminium framing, glass to cover the cells, and some backing material and wiring, all of which are trivially recyclable. So even if the doped silicon wasn't recyclable (which it is with a little more effort than the other materials) that's hardly the majority of the material that goes into making a solar panel.

No, it goes in a shredder you’d use for e-waste disposal and ~90% of the material can be reused.

https://www.epa.gov/hw/solar-panel-recycling

https://www.firstsolar.com/Solutions/Recycling

> One kilogram of First Solar’s semiconductor material can be recycled 41 times over, which translates into a use time of more than 1,200 years.




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