Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Disposable paper circuit board is the future of disposable electronic products.

I believe that when we were young, we all liked paper airplanes, which obeyed the same aerodynamic laws as supersonic jets. Although paper aircraft can only be used as a model of aerodynamic performance, disposable paper circuit boards have been seen as more affordable, more accessible, more flexible and environmentally friendly printed circuit board (PCB) design solutions.

How serious is the problem of electronic waste? As electronic products become more and more common, rapid updating leads to rapid obsolescence and a substantial increase in e-waste, which has a serious negative impact on the environment and public health. The United States produced about 7 million tons of e-waste in 2019, of which only about 17% was recycled. Recycling electronic devices is very difficult because they are not technically designed for recycling and have non-biodegradable and toxic inorganic materials.

We have billions of phones around the world, and smartphones are just part of the e-waste problem we now face-a problem exacerbated by a variety of other electronic devices. As the world upgrades to newer 5G devices and the pace of digital transformation accelerates, the problem will only get worse.

In order to meet this challenge, we need to adopt a two-pronged strategy. We should not only greatly improve the recycling capacity of electronic products, but also strive to produce disposable electronic products.

Create a prototype circuit board on a piece of paper a team of researchers from the State University of New York at Binghamton first printed the wax passage pattern on a piece of filter paper. The prototype produced by the team is made of sheet-fed paper with fully integrated electrical components that can be burned or degraded.

"obviously, in terms of environmental protection, our entire paper electronics will be much better than traditional technologies that use off-the-shelf non-biodegradable electronic components.

Professor Cui Xixian, head of the research team

At present, most electronic products on the market are made up of circuits made of fiberglass, resin and metal wiring. The problem with these designs is that they are expensive, bulky and extremely difficult to recycle. These disadvantages make them unsuitable for medical devices, environmental monitors or personal wearable devices used in care sites. One of the most popular alternatives is paper-based circuits.

Paper has excellent compatibility with disposable applications, providing a more affordable, more accessible, more flexible and easy-to-use alternative. The biodegradability of paper has attracted much attention as the future of green electronic products, which reduces the sharp increase of e-waste. In addition, because of its excellent mechanical and dielectric properties as well as chemical and thermal stability, paper has become a game-changing substrate for the next generation of electronic products (called paper electronics).

The natural compatibility of paper with wicking, printing and stacking enables us to take advantage of all the beneficial features of paper in a cost-effective and environmentally friendly manner, thereby minimizing the complexity of manufacturing process and equipment design. Through wax printing, paper and ink injection and screen printing, the wire can remain flexible and fully integrated with the paper substrate.

Potential batch formation process the team designed a paper-based amplifier circuit that includes resistors, capacitors and transistors. After printing the wax channel as described above, they melt the wax, soak it on the paper, and then apply conductive and semi-conductive ink on the paper-areas of the paper that have not yet been saturated with wax. Finally, they screen-printed additional conductive metal parts and cast gel-based electrolytes onto the sheet.

In the subsequent experiments conducted by the team, it is found that the performance of the design is correct and very flexible. Full-paper disposable applications can be easily and safely treated by incineration or biodegradation. Printed circuit boards are reduced to ash 20 seconds after ignition-showing their degradability, and incineration facilities can use many techniques to ensure proper combustion and reduce emissions. This is a key step in the production of fully disposable electronic devices. This will also solve the e-waste problem we encounter at present to a great extent.

Application and Design of Disposable Paper Circuit Board

The disposable paper circuit board will be suitable for the disposable wireless sensor network (WSN) through the Internet of things, which will be named disposable Internet of things (IoDT). The novelty of IoDT is that its WSN can be built with small, compact, disposable, functional, but inexpensive packages that can be connected to work done and then easily disposed of.

IoDT devices will provide a high degree of intelligence and autonomy through rapid deployment of new applications and creation of services at affordable prices, such as personalized healthcare systems at care points, logistics and freight tracking solutions, food and grocery monitoring systems, and military surveillance or delivery systems.

Given that biodegradable electronic products made of fully biodegradable materials will solve the problem of uncontrollable e-waste, intensive technological advances in material science and paper processing will be essential.

Although the project attempts to use biocompatible synthetic polymers and environmentally friendly semiconductors, conductive and insulating materials, the discovery and engineering of biodegradable materials is beyond the scope of the project. The focus of this work is to understand the potential of paper as a substrate and to develop innovative strategies to integrate existing electronic components into paper and develop manufacturing paradigms.

However, in the future work, the ingredients will be replaced by more biodegradable materials.

However, all paper equipment requires additional packaging, as humidity can greatly change the shape of the paper and reduce its performance and shelf life.

The goal of the project is not to replace the traditional inorganic electronics industry. Instead, it provides opportunities for new technologies, applications and markets to reduce the sharp increase in e-waste.

The one-time operation of short programming does not require high-tech integrated circuits with high resolution and reliability. However, the research team says it will do more research on higher density and performance.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: new Research (ID:chuxinyanjiu), author: Faisal Khan, compiled by Tang Poetry

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.