Junpyo Kwon, a Ph.D. student researcher from the Xu Group at UC Berkeley, is shown holding a recyclable, biodegradable printed circuit. The advance could divert wearable devices and other flexible electronics from landfill, and mitigate the health and environmental hazards posed by heavy metal waste.
Credit: Marilyn Sargent/Berkeley Lab
According to the United Nations, less than a quarter of all U.S. electronic waste gets recycled. In 2021 alone, global e-waste surged at 57.4 million tons, and only 17.4% of that was recycled.
Some experts predict that our e-waste problem will only get worse over time, because most electronics on the market today are designed for portability, not recyclability. Tablets and readers, for example, are assembled by gluing circuits, chips, and hard drives to thin layers of plastic, which must be melted to extract precious metals like copper and gold. Burning plastic releases toxic gases into the atmosphere, and electronics wasting away in landfill often contain harmful materials like mercury, lead, and beryllium.
But now, a team of researchers from the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and UC Berkeley have developed a potential solution: a fully recyclable and biodegradable printed circuit. The researchers, who reported the new device in the journal Advanced Materials, say that the advance could divert wearable devices and other flexible electronics from landfill, and mitigate the health and environmental hazards posed by heavy metal waste.
“When it comes to plastic e-waste, it’s easy to say it’s impossible to solve and walk away,” said senior author Ting Xu, a faculty senior scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division, and professor of chemistry and materials science and engineering at UC Berkeley. “But scientists are finding more evidence of significant health and environmental concerns caused by e-waste leaching into the soil and groundwater. With this study, we’re showing that even though you can’t solve the whole problem yet, you can at least tackle the problem of recovering heavy metals without polluting the environment.”
Putting enzymes to work
In a previous study(opens in a new tab), Xu and her team demonstrated a biodegradable plastic material embedded with purified enzymes such as Burkholderia cepacian lipase (BC-lipase). Through that work, they discovered that hot water activates BC-lipase, prompting the enzyme to degrade polymer chains into monomer building blocks. They also learned that BC-lipase is a finicky “eater.” Before a lipase can convert a polymer chain into monomers, it must first catch the end of a polymer chain. By controlling when the lipase finds the chain end, it is possible to ensure the materials don’t degrade until the water reaches a certain temperature.
Original Article: Print, Recycle, Repeat: Scientists Demonstrate a Biodegradable Printed Circuit
More from: University of California Berkeley | Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
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