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Water-soluble circuit boards could cut carbon footprints by 60 percent | Engadget
(www.engadget.com)
this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
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So far this seems like it would lead to more e-waste with electronics disintegrating sooner.
It all depends on the application (which the article doesn't really get into). There are plenty of electronic devices which dont see particularly demanding lives, and where failure of the electronic components is not what typically leads it to being tossed.
That said, it sounds like it's only the dielectric substrate that's biodegradable, which means the traces, plating, solder, and mounted components still need to be dealt with--which is much more concerning than epoxy resin and fiberglass, polyimide, or polyester, depending on what type of pcb is being displaced.
The best use case sounds like it would be to make recycling easier, since once you dissolve the substrate, the rest of the metals should be much easier to recover.
ETA: I currently do a lot of work with medical wearable device development and manufacturing. Those are by nature disposable electronics with lifespans measured in hours or days; and especially in a clinical setting, would be much more likely to end up in the correct waste stream for recycling. That is one good use case I could see for such a product.
Yeah, this seems like a partial solution which is not very broadly viable on its own, but can still have niche applications.
Also, pardon me for bringing up the topic of violence, but I was thinking about what electronics might have particularly short lifespans and I thought of the circuitry of kamikaze drones and missiles used in military conflicts. It'd be a curious but potentially relevant way for defense industries to be more environmentally friendly in at least some way (and it's not like weapons production is going to stop anytime soon, regardless of moral questions).
You're definitely right to point out that the other components are much more concerning from a pollution standpoint. Still, though, I think this improvement is certainly better than nothing. And it might be part of a more broadly applicable change in the future.
I think PCBs like these wouldn't be used in places where water ingress is a possibility but rather where all measures are already taken to avoid water entering the device. Think about servers in a datacenter or sealed devices.