Green electronics manufacturing creates electronic products that have minimum adverse environmental effects throughout their life cycle, which means
* harmful materials are used or generated
* eco-efficient and environment-sensible manufacture processes are adopted
* less power is consumed in operation and stand by modes
* fully recyclable with no hazardous waste
Key elements to implement the green electronics manufacturing are:
1. Sustainability: meeting the needs of society in ways that can continue indefinitely into the future.
2. Life cycle (cradle to cradle) design: ending the cradle to grave cycle of manufacturing by creating products that can be fully reclaimed or reused or recycled.
3. Source reduction: reducing waste and pollution by changing patterns of production and consumption.
4. Innovation: developing alternatives to technologies through TRIZ (Theory of Inventive Problem-Solving) and Axiomatic Design.
5. Viability: creating economic activities that are friendly to the environment.
The typical approach in electronics manufacturing has been subtractive– to remove materials to make the final product useful, e.g., to cut or drill materials away, leaving only the desired substance. Subtractive electronics manufacturing generates a lot of wastes (piles of scrap), which are detrimental to the environment and ecosystems.
Incorporating 3D printing and laser sintering into electronics manufacturing, Additive Electronics Manufacturing (AEM), a branch of Additive Manufacturing, adds material in layers to create the desired three-dimensional devices. The desired devices can be made of materials that can be sprayed as liquids (e.g., plastics or resins) or formed from melted powder (including metals and ceramics). The devices are typically manufactured directly from a 3D CAD image. Comparing with subtractive electronics manufacturing, AEM reduce/minimize wastes generated from material removal, and thus
* save material cost,
* consume less energy during manufacturing/production
* improve productivity
* prevent pollution/contamination of the environment.
Currently, the narrow choice of materials used in AEM remains a key limitation to more advanced systems. In nanotechnology, nano-materials with specially tailored properties can be modified by ultra fine particle size, crystallinity, structure or surface condition. By leveraging the modifiable properties of nanostructures, electronic devices can be created from the bottom-up by adding material one cross-sectional layer at a time, expanding the material properties, and thus applications, of AEM. Integrating multiple nano-electronic devices in the same AEM part would then allow us to move from simple to more complex printed objects such as“smart” products from phones to tablets, watches, and glasses. Recent advancements in nano-biomaterials could also further enable the printing of replacement organs and bone, leading to advances in tissue repair for wound healing. Being able to start from atoms to form the desired structure, nano manufacturing paves a way to provide sustainable green electronics manufacturing by minimizing cost due to materials removal, and thus create environmental sensible products that are cost-effective.
In summary, Nano Research & Applications enable Green Additive Electronics Manufacturing, creating electronic products that have minimum adverse environmental effects throughout their life cycle. Furthermore, integrate nanotechnology and additive electronics manufacturing could facilitate cellular manufacturing of electronic products by providing more flexibility in device geometry, PCB layout/topology, and electronic materials.
drjohnxwang 