Anyone who’s spent significant amounts of time salvaging old electronics has probably wished there were a way to take apart a circuit board without desoldering it. [Zeyu Yan] et al seem to have had the same thought, and so designed circuit boards that can be dissolved and recycled when they become obsolete.
The researchers printed the circuit boards out of water-soluble PVA, with hollow channels in place of interconnects. After printing the boards, they injected a eutectic gallium-indium liquid metal alloy into these channels, populated the boards with components, making sure that their leads were in contact with the liquid alloy, and finally closed off the channels with PVA glue, which also held the components in place. When the board is ready to recycle, they simply dissolve the board and glue in water. The electric components tend to separate easily from the liquid alloy, and both can be recovered and reused. Even the PVA can be reused: the researchers evaporated the solution left after dissolving a board, broke up the remaining PVA, and extruded it as new filament.
The researchers designed a FreeCAD plugin to turn single or multi-layer KiCad circuit layouts into printable files. They had to design a few special sockets to hold components in place, since no solder will be fastening them, but it does support both SMD and through-hole components. The traces have a bit more cross-sectional area than normal copper traces, which has the advantage of compensating for the liquid alloy’s higher resistance; their standard traces had no trouble dissipating heat when carrying 5 amps of current. As a proof of concept, they were able to make a Bluetooth speaker, an electronic fidget toy, and a flexible gripper arm.
This isn’t the first time these researchers have worked on reducing circuit board e-waste; they’ve made solderless and reusable circuit boards before. If you’re interested in more PVA printing, we’ve seen some unusual applications for it.
This articles is written by : Nermeen Nabil Khear Abdelmalak
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