Printed circuit board substrates derived from lignocellulose nanofibrils | Hacker News Reader

Printed circuit board substrates derived from lignocellulose nanofibrils

nature.com

36 pointsPaulHoule18 comments

This study underscores the potential of wood-derived nanomaterials like LCNF to reduce electronic waste (e-waste) associated with conventional PCB materials and promote the development of a more eco-friendly electronics, contributing to sustainable, high-performance ecoPCBs and advancing green technology.

So many trendy eco-virtue-signaling buzzwords, but as anyone who has worked with attempting to repair FR-1/FR-2 (SRBP) PCBs will tell you, they've been making them out of cellulose-derived materials for around a century; but they just aren't very good.

"Sustainable" = "doesn't last very long and is impossible to repair, sustaining the business of selling you a new one".

I’ve heard the rayon process, which can take (m)any natural fiber source and convert it into something vaguely like a synthetic silk, has quite a pollution footprint. The more you have to process the fibers to be like a niche or synthetic fiber the more it becomes greenwashing.

Method Inc went through a phase where they made containers out of virgin materials because the overall ecological footprint was several times better than the best we could hope for plastic recycling, and that was before we found out plastic recycling is half sham. A lot of the trick was making thinner containers out of specialty materials that were lower volume than the waste stream from plastic recycling. Eventually they figured out a recyclable material that is as light as the disposable ones, so they get the best of both worlds. Unfortunately they only use those for hand soap refills.

Yup, this was also what irked me in the rationale of this paper: Combatting e-waste is a good cause, but this is not what the paper is doing - it's alleviating some of the harmful side-effects of e-waste.

The root cause that I'd like to see addressed is an industry that has incentives to churn out unrepairable throwaway electronics. But stuff like this that try to greenwash e-waste would make it less likely that the root cause is addressed, not more.

This story gives me nightmares!

Why? I recently had a repair bill of more than $12,000 for my Kia EV6, after rats got under the hood and chewed through a critical wiring harness.

Of course rats will chew through most anything, but the EV6 apparently has soy-based insulation on the wiring instead of traditional plastic. So it is extra tasty for rats!

GEICO covered everything beyond my $1000 comprehensive deductible, but I don't want to be thought of as an irresponsible policyholder, especially with the great rate they gave me on this car - literally half of my previous policy.

So I have taken extensive countermeasures. If anyone is curious, feel free to ask and I will list them.

Jaw dropped on reading this. The biodegradable Mercedes harnesses of the 90s followed the Volvo harnesses of the 80s (iirc). I thought we'd worked that out of the automotive engineering world by now. I'm not funded by the petroleum or rubber industry, yet i also can't help but wonder what would drive technical product managers to make a notable error? Wiring issues in cases aren't cheap problems to fix, nor do they fix themselves, nor increase longevity...

Reminds me of this classic: https://haterade.substack.com/p/i-tasted-hondas-spicy-rodent...

You would think the auto manufacturers should shoulder the burden of making wires less delicious.

We’ve got people making circuits from woody plant fibers and people making circuits from microbes that eat woody plant fibers.

Definitely want to keep those two factories separate. And don’t get the former wet.

> The research outlines the process of fibrillating lignin-rich cellulose pulp at 10 kW/h per kg into LCNF

That unit doesn't look right.

Why can't we all just use SI anyway :(

10 kilowatts is 10,000 watts, which is 10,000 joules per second. So... 10,000 joules per second per hour per kilogram. Wait... What? What in the hell does "10kW/h" mean?!

Hopefully they meant kWh. Kilowatt-hours per kg makes a ton more sense. That's just a measure of energy spent per unit of mass produced, right?

(P.S.: though all things considered, it seems a shame that we use kilowatt-hours instead of something simpler like kilojoules... but I guess that would be harder to intuit in some cases?)

That is SI? Well metric. Sounds like the liganization process uses electricity to create. There’s similar units used in electrochemistry to indicate how much energy is required.

Not one mention of the material's dialectric constant

I'd expect the loss coefficient (tan d) to be terrible. Cellulosics hold onto water quite well. You will not have a good time pushing anything high-speed through this kind of board.

I would say the only practical application would be disposable things like PCBs in single-use vape pens. (Which are pretty environmentally offensive on other levels anyway.)

> Not one mention of the material's dialectric constant

They weren't able to measure it because it kept changing. /s

So now we can have a few more failure modes. Dry rot, black mold, short caused by moisture, maybe even termite in electronics.

I suspect this material is dead on arrival because they don't compare how fire retardant it is compared to FR4 or evaluate whether it meets the UL 94V-0 fire safety standard.

I'll never forget the smell of paper phenolic PCB's releasing their magic smoke.

Good point but perhaps coatings or impregnated fire retardant compounds can be utilized?

The problem is that treatment like that is probably not compatible with the whole "being biodegradable" thing - which defeats the entire purpose.

Same with "paper" coffee cups: you want coffee cups which can be recycled, and paper is recycleable, but paper can't hold water, so it requires a plastic / hydrophobic coating, so you can't recycle the paper, so your recycleable coffee cups aren't recycleable.

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