New PCB design is repeatably recyclable — vitrimer PCBs could save millions of tons in eWaste, say UW researchers
New PCB design is repeatably recyclable — vitrimer PCBs could save millions of tons in eWaste, say UW researchers
vPCBs can be recycled with 98% vitrimer recovery and 100% glass fiber recovery.
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Literally no mention in the article of how durable these things are. Kind of matters for how well they could just outright replace regular PCBs. I imagine it's perfectly fine for stuff you'd have at home or an office, but there's electronics everywhere these days. Would they last just as long in a car? Airplane? Tractors? Boats? Submarines? Satellites? Shuttles?
They don't need to replace PCBs everywhere, even doing so just in the stuff that already doesn't last long would make a huge difference. In long term applications you get less waste per unit of time anyway.
In the article there was a link to UW:s own article which had a link to research groups own page, which had a link to original research: "Recyclable vitrimer-based printed circuit boards for sustainable electronics" https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-024-01333-7 .
I'm just a curious layman, but on my cursory look it seems that it's quite stable against heat, moisture and chemicals. Looks promising, hopefully this is cheap enough that manufacturers actually start using it.
Ahh, I messed up my other comments. No matter, but I found the pre print here if you want to read more into it
Cool, then we can use it for home and office stuff, and not the rest, then. Reducing some e-waste is better than reducing none.
this is also a relevant question for home electronics, reduce and reuse comes before recycle for a reason.