Infineon announced that it has created a circuit board that can be decomposed by water, which uses a new British startupJiva MaterialsThe "Soluboard" material technology provided by the company uses natural fibers and polymers to replace traditional circuit boards made of composite materials such as glass fiber.
The "Soluboard" material is claimed to be able to completely dissolve in hot water in less than 6 minutes, and can also decompose within a few hours even in normal temperature water.
The chips and metal circuits originally attached to the circuit boards made of "Soluboard" material can be recycled through filtration, thereby reducing the difficulty and cost of disassembling the original circuit boards and increasing the recovery rate of precious metals.
In addition, using "Soluboard" material to make circuit boards not only reduces the difficulty of processing and recycling, but also reduces the carbon footprint during the manufacturing process. Compared with traditional circuit boards, it can be reduced by about 60%, and even reduce carbon emissions by about 10.5 kilograms per square meter, and reduce plastic by about 620 grams.
Currently, Infineon has designed three different types of circuit boards using the "Soluboard" material and has produced approximately 500 water-degradable circuit boards as demonstrations, which can also be used by customers for application evaluation. In the future, it plans to promote the large-scale use of such circuit boards and, through recycling guidelines, enable the market to more efficiently recycle usable parts and precious metals using circuit board products, while also reducing the generation of large amounts of electronic waste.
♻️ We are adopting Soluboard®, a #recyclable & #biodegradable printed circuit board substrate based on natural fibers. It was designed by @JivaMaterials & the #organic structure allows the components of devices to dissolve when immersed in hot water. More: https://t.co/3yLMC5cuGh pic.twitter.com/mnWjPbSok7
— Infineon (@Infineon) July 28, 2023
