Hello everyone and welcome back to the Cognixia podcast. Every week, we get together to talk about the latest happenings, bust some myths, discuss new concepts, and a lot more from the world of digital emerging technologies. From cloud computing to DevOps, containers to ChatGPT, and Project management to IT service management, we cover a little bit of everything week after week, to inspire our listeners to learn something new, sharpen their skills, and move ahead in their careers.
Electronic waste, or e-waste, is fast becoming one of the world’s most pressing environmental challenges. With the rapid pace of technological advancement, we’re churning out old devices at an alarming rate. From smartphones to computers, televisions to toasters, almost everything with a plug or battery eventually becomes e-waste. This mountain of discarded electronics is growing at a staggering pace.
The scale of the problem is mind-boggling. In 2022 alone, a staggering 62 million metric tons of e-waste were generated globally. To put that into perspective, it’s like throwing away thousands of laptops every second. This massive amount of waste is not only a waste of valuable resources but also a ticking time bomb for the environment. The toxic chemicals and hazardous materials found in electronic devices can leach into the soil and water, posing serious health risks to humans and wildlife.
So, what can be done?
Well, – researchers at MIT, the University of Utah, and Meta have cooked up a new flexible material that could be a game-changer for electronics. Not only can it be recycled at the end of a device’s life, but it also allows for building way more complex, multi-layered circuits than we can currently do. It’s like upgrading your phone’s motherboard to a supercharged version!
According to the paper published in the RSC: Applied Polymers journal, MIT professor Thomas J. Wallin, University of Utah professor Chen Wang and a team of seven other researchers developed this new material.
A lot of research that has happened in the field of e-waste generation and management has focused on developing alternatives to conventional substrates. These generally use a polymer called Kapton, which is the trade name for polyimide. A lot of these polymers that get developed as alternatives often ignore the commercial aspect of their usage. The key question to ask is why would one switch to these alternatives instead of Kapton. Kapton, after all, has excellent thermal and insulating properties and is readily available.
Such is the demand for electronics and Kapton that the polyimide business globally is pegged to touch $4 billion by 2030. Every electronic device on the planet has polyimide in it, the little flexible cables inside your cell phone that connect one component to another have polyimide in it, those little cables that connect components inside a laptop have it, and even aerospace machines have it because of the fantastic heat tolerance that the material has. Polyimide is quite the classic material used by the industry, but there has been no update in this department for three to four decades now. Considering how fast technology advances, that would be a lot, won’t you say?
But what is the problem with using polyimide? Well, it is impossible to melt or dissolve. It can’t be reprocessed. It also takes a lot of energy to make polyimide, requiring the heating of materials to 200 to 300 degrees Celsius for hours. The properties that make polyimide such a fantastic material to use, also make it difficult for the manufacturing of circuits into advanced architectures, for instance, multilayered electronics.
So, is this new material that has been developed the ultimate alternative to polyimide? Will we no longer need to use polyimide? Let’s make polyimide extinct!
Well, it’s not that simple. It generally isn’t, is it?
The new material is a form of polyimide itself. It is easily compatible with the existing manufacturing setups, so switching shouldn’t be all that hard. The new material is a light-cured polymer. Do you know that strong, durable material that dentists use to make fillings for your teeth that usually cures in just a few seconds when exposed to ultraviolet light? This new material is something like that. What’s more, it can be hardened quickly and at room temperature! Now, how cool is that?
This new material, the paper says, could serve as the substrate for multi-layered circuits, which would in turn enable a lot of components to be added into a small form factor. The thing with Kapton is that it won’t melt easily, so the layers had to be glued together, which as you can imagine, means more steps involved, higher costs, and more time. The new material can be processed at low temperatures while also hardening very quickly on demand and this could open up possibilities for new multilayer devices.
But, what about recyclability? Wasn’t that also a problem with Kapton?
It was. The research team has introduced subunits into the polymer backbone that can be rapidly dissolved away by an alcohol and catalyst solution. Following that, the precious metals that were used in the circuits, as well as entire microchips, can be recovered from the solution and reused for new devices. The polymer has ester groups in its backbone. It only takes a mild solution to break down these esters while the rest of the device would not be harmed at all.
In recent years, the semiconductor chip shortage has been quite dire from time to time, and this could be a great solution because the chips and components can easily be extracted back while the substrate material is broken down and separated. Moreover, the elements and compounds required to build these precious components are limited in supply on Earth, so now is the time to wake up and use them wisely.
This tech would be commercialized and we hope it would be able to help our planet as well as help technology advance more while also making it more accessible, and maybe even cheaper. But the development sure is very interesting. If successful, it could be quite a game-changer for the electronics and wearables industry.
With that, we come to the end of this week’s episode of the Cognixia podcast. We will be back again next week with another interesting and exciting new episode. Till then, be curious to know more about the world around you and happy learning!
