A new way of creating electronic circuit boards can address the tens of millions of tonnes of e-waste generated annually (University of Glasgow) <\/p>\n
Engineers have invented a new type of biodegradable<\/a> circuit board that could drastically reduce electronic waste.<\/p>\n The environmentally-friendly design, developed by a team at the University of Glasgow<\/a>, can be made with paper, bioplastics, and even chocolate, which can be safely disposed of through ordinary soil composting.<\/p>\n The breakthrough centres on a new method of printing electronic circuits onto biodegradable surfaces using zinc \u2013 rather than the copper used in conventional circuit boards.<\/p>\n The new circuit boards perform comparably to traditional boards and have already been tested successfully in various devices, including LED counters and temperature sensors.<\/p>\n \u201cOne key aspect of our work is that almost any substrate material can be used in the process, ranging from paper and bioplastics for more realistic applications, to chocolate for tasty but probably not very practical demonstrations,\u201d said Professor Jeff Kettle from the University of Glasgow\u2019s James Watt School of Engineering.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are now exploring ways to adapt this technique to other fields such as mouldable electronics<\/a> or biosensing, which could also benefit from a cheap and versatile way to make high quality circuits with low environmental footprints.\u201d<\/p>\n It provides a novel solution to the growing problem of e-waste, with an estimated 62 million tonnes of electronics discarded in 2024, according to the United Nations Environment<\/a> Programme.<\/p>\n Zinc-based electronic circuit boards can be printed on paper, bioplastics and chocolate (University of Glasgow) <\/p>\n