Scientists take inspiration from trees to make electronics greener
Christie Wilcox, Science.org, November 25, 2024
In a literally green technological advance, a team of researchers has found a way to replace the conventional printed circuit board (PCB) in electronic devices with a biodegradable alternative made out of tree leaves. Reported earlier this month in Science Advances, such “leaftronics” could help reduce the tens of millions of tons of electronic waste, or e-waste, humanity produces every year.
The idea is “very exciting” and “quite promising,” says Lan Yin, a materials scientist and engineer at Tsinghua University who works on developing biodegradable electronics but was not involved in the study.
E-waste is everywhere and piling up fast. In 2022, manufacturers produced 62 million tons of e-waste globally. And that figure is expected to increase by more than 30% by 2030, because modern electronics are designed to be disposable, says Rakesh Nair, a postdoctoral researcher and engineer with the Institute for Applied Physics at the Dresden University of Technology (TU Dresden). “We can easily make electronics that last for 10 or 20, 30 years, but we deliberately make them so that you buy the new model,” Nair says.
By mass, circuit boards—the panels that electronic components attach to—make up as much as 60% of e-waste. PCBs are typically made of extremely tough plastic or fiberglass infused with epoxy, an unrecyclable substrate that is “the core of the problem,” says Hans Kleemann, an experimental physicist at TU Dresden and Nair’s adviser. “It really stops you from all these important things like recycling and reusing components.” So Kleemann, Nair, and colleagues set out to find a greener alternative.
Nair first thought of using paper for the boards but was dissuaded by the amount of water and pollutants needed to generate paper. One day, when looking at the large magnolia tree near his institute, “it just clicked”: He could use its leaves instead.
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