Hot water the key to recyclable electronics?
Looking to reduce the impact of the electronics industry's huge waste problem, the National Physical Laboratory has developed a printed circuit board whose components can be easily separated by immersion in hot water.
The work, developed in partnership with In2Tec UK and Gwent Electronic Materials, was part of the ReUSE (Reuseable, Unzippable, Sustainable Electronics) project, funded by the UK government's Technology Strategy Board.
The project's aim is to increase the recyclability of electronic assemblies, in order to avoid an ever growing volume of waste.
The project partners designed, developed and tested a series of unzippable polymeric layers which, while withstanding prolonged thermal cycling and damp heat stressing, allow the assemblies to be easily separated at end of life into their constituent parts, after immersion in hot water.
Lending itself to rigid, flexible and 3D structures, the technology is said to allow 90% of the original structure to be reused, compared to the 2% currently possible.
The disassembly process is demonstrated in the video below.
