Etching and leaching are proven to be feasible methods for recovery of semiconductor materials from PV modules and have been used in several commercialized recycling examples. Owing to the difference in material, manufacturing technologies and mod- ule structure, the material separation of thin-film modules is more complicated than the Si ones. In order to reduce the chemical use of the leaching or etching process for both economic and envir- onmental purposes, a feasible option is the employment of some dry or wet mechanical processes (i.e. blasting, scribing, attrition, sieving, flotation) before the leaching or etching process to remove the non-metal materials and therefore reduce the material input of the leaching or etching process.