New Biodegradable, Printed Circuit Device Developed to Solve the Plastic E-Waste Problem and Mitigate Health, Environmental Hazards

Tablets and electronic readers, for instance, are assembled by gluing chips, circuits, and hard drives to thin plastic layers that need to be melted to extract precious metals such as copper and gold.

Less than 25 percent of all electronic waste in the United States gets recycled, a Nanowerk report specified. Last year alone, global e-waste surged to 57.5 million tons; just 17.4 percent of that was recycled.

According to some experts' predictions, the e-waste problem will only worsen over time since most electronics on the market are designed for portability instead of recyclability.

However, plastic releases toxic gases into the atmosphere, and electronics "wasting away" in landfills frequently consist of dangerous materials such as lead, beryllium, and mercury.

Solving Plastic E-Waste

Now, a team of researchers from the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and UC Berkeley has developed a potential solution, a completely recyclable and biodegradable printed circuit.

The study authors who reported the new device in the Advanced Materials journal said that the advance could divert wearable devices and other flexible electronics from landfill and mitigate both health and environmental hazards posed by heavy metal waste.

According to the study's senior author, Ting Xu, professor of chemistry and materials science and engineering at UC Berkeley, and a faculty senior scientist in Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division, when it comes to plastic e-waste, it is easy to say it is not possible "to solve and walk away."

However, scientists are discovering more evidence of substantial health and environmental concerns caused by e-waste leaching into the groundwater and soil.

Recovering Heavy Metals Minus Polluting the Environment

With this study, the researchers revealed that even though one cannot solve the entire problem, he can at least tackle the issue of recovering heavy metals minus polluting the environment.

For this new research, Xu and her team had the process simplified even more extensively. Instead of expensive purified enzymes, the biodegradable printed circuits depend on cheaper, self-read BC lipase "cocktails."

This substantially lessens costs, facilitating the entry of the printed circuits into mass manufacturing, explained Xu.

By doing so, the study investigators advanced their technology, allowing them to develop a printable "conductive ink" composed of biodegradable polyester binders and conductive fillers like silver flakes or carbon blato commercially available enzyme cocktails.

Biodegradable, Recyclable Printed Circuit Demonstrated

The ink is getting its electrical conductivity from the silver or carbon black particles. More so, the biodegradable polyester binders function as glue.

Furthermore, the researchers supplied a commercial 3D printer with conductive ink to print circuit patterns onto surfaces like hard biodegradable plastic, cloth, and flexible biodegradable plastic.

A TechXplore report said that now that the researchers have demonstrated a biodegradable and recyclable printed circuit, Xu wants to show a microchip that's printable, recyclable, and biodegradable.

She explained that it wouldn't be easy t given how sophisticated chips are. However, there's a need to try and "give our level best."

Related information about the biodegradable printed circuit is shown on Berkeley Lab's YouTube video below:

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