A Circuit Board Grown From Leaves Could Set a New Standard in Electronics
As e-waste continues piling in landfills, toxic sludge from rare earth metals leaches into the ground, propelling a growing environmental disaster.
To combat this, scientists at the Dresden University of Technology have created a biodegradable circuit board using a tree leaf.
Although not currently as robust as typical printed circuit boards, this research shows that the electronics industry isn’t somehow exempt from finding ways to make their products more sustainable.
According to recent estimates, there are nearly 7 billion smartphones in the world. With many tech companies avidly hoping you’ll upgrade your pocket computer annually ad nauseum, that means a lot of electronic waste (e-waste) in landfills leaking toxic chemicals detrimental to human and environmental health. And that’s only smartphones. The U.N. estimates that in 2022, the world produced 62 billion kilograms of e-waste—an 82 percent increase from just a decade earlier.
While other industries have started transitioning toward biodegradable products, electronics is more complicated, as it often relies on rare earth metals that produce toxic waste But now, the industry may be turning over a new leaf… literally. An international team of scientists, led by researchers at the Dresden University of Technology (TU Dresden) in Germany, have leveraged the quasi-fractal lignocellulose structures—essentially the veiny scaffolding of a leaf—in leaves to create biodegradable polymer films. In other words, they’ve made leaf-based electronics, or “leaftronics,” as the researchers called it. The details of this process were published in the journal Science Advances in November.
“We were surprised to find that these natural quasi-fractal lignocellulose skeletons not only support living cells in nature, but can also hold solution-processable polymers together, even at relatively high temperatures where these polymers should begin flowing,” TU Dresden’s Hans Kleemann, a co-author of the study, said in a press statement.
These natural quasi-fractal structures thermomechanically stabilized polymers films, but crucially did not impact their biodegradability along the way. Furthermore, the researchers demonstrated that these polymer films can withstand soldered circuitry and support organic light-emitting diodes, or OLEDS.
Of course, the main attraction of “leaftronics” is its ability to break down after it’s been used. Science reports that the team can successfully remove metals and circuitry by placing this leaf-based circuit board in an ultrasonic acid bath. After one month, the boards then began degrading in a compost heap.
“This work points to a promising fusion of nature and technology, offering a sustainable path forward as we strive to reduce waste and combat climate change, a step to circular economy in electronics,” TU Dresden’s Karl Leo, senior author of the study, said in a press statement.
Although this research shows that electronics doesn’t need to be excluded from the biodegradable conversation, the team admits that the robustness of conventional printed circuit board far exceeds their current leaftronic prototypes. But if the industry has a willingness to change, the team envisions future featuring electronics factories situated next to tree farms developing biodegradable circuit boards capable of powering a sustainable future.
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