Photos: Reclaiming silicon with water

James Procopio, an IBM chip manufacturing project manager, holds a semiconductor wafer prior to water polishing and Michelle Bolz, an IBM manufacturing engineer, displays a solar panel. Texas Instruments already gets about $8 million a year out of selling its old scrap wafers. IBM, though, claims its technique for converting chip wafers to blanks for the panel industry is more eco-friendly.

Photo by IBM