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Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

Actually, there are companies working on PCBs based on organic, water-soluble substrates [1] - to recycle a board, you boil it in some hot water and get a liquid stream containing the substrate and a solid stream containing the electronic components and copper traces.

[1] https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/new-biodegrada...

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Which is a researach-stage idea with obvious drawbacks: Moisture in air will also slowly decompose PCBs, making them age much faster than traditional epoxy-based PCBs. So then you either limit the maximum age of all your products severely (not very green) or you need additional materials to moisture-proof all your casings (also not very green).

Do you really think that they haven’t spent at least as much time thinking about this? The question would be whether those devices are replaced in less than the time it takes for natural degradation to cause problems, and both of your “not very green” dismissals sound entirely too pat. The entire reason we’re talking about this is that the industry has a huge problem with things having a service life measured in single digit years and a landfill life measured in centuries – making those easier to recycle would be a huge win because there’s no way that the current model is going to get the service life significantly closer to that kind of timeframe.

From the article that was linked:

> The research will also provide Infineon with a fundamental understanding of the design and reliability challenges customers face with the new material in their core applications.

That is corporate-speak for: they have no idea.

It sounds more like they know that this is a hard problem requiring foundational research, and suggests that rather more thought has gone into it than a quick HN comment dismissing their work.

If I understand it correctly, their idea is to use a binding polymer that needs heat to dissolve.

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