| Issue |
Matériaux & Techniques
Volume 109, Number 5-6, 2021
Special Issue on ‘Materials and Society: the circular economy, design for circularity and industrial symbiosis’, edited by Jean-Pierre Birat, Gaël Fick, Nicolas Perry, Andrea Declich, Leiv Kolbensein, Dominique Millet and Thecle Alix
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Article Number | 505 | |
| Number of page(s) | 11 | |
| Section | Environnement - recyclage / Environment - recycling | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/mattech/2022013 | |
| Published online | 11 March 2022 | |
Regular Article
Sustainability screening in the context of advanced material development for printed electronics☆
1
Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics IBP, Department Life Cycle Engineering GaBi,
Stuttgart, Germany
2
University of Stuttgart, Institute for Acoustics and Building Physics IABP, Department Life Cycle Engineering GaBi,
Stuttgart, Germany
* e-mail: florian.gehring@ibp.fraunhofer.de
Received:
11
September
2021
Accepted:
8
February
2022
Flexible, ultra-light and wafer-thin – the future of electronics is printed! The cornerstones for this development are conductive inks and adhesives that connect components and sensors with each other, integrating them into a printed environment. A decisive role hereby is played by advanced materials, such as functional inks, and their interaction in final devices for application in various use-cases. For this purpose, various particle structures in the nanometre range are created that enable the required conductivity, while keeping material input of the conductive substance as low as possible. Due to the excellent properties, the versatile functionalities, the possible high production volumes and the associated reduced production costs a wide range of applications is facilitated through printed electronics and mass markets become accessible. Therefore, associated environmental impacts as well as the security of the supply chain are expected to gain further relevance in the future. Yet, as most of the processes are in a development stage, prospective assessments before the start of production are essential, if development of printed electronics shall be aligned with sustainability goals. In order to address environmental consequences of future implementations of advanced materials for printed electronics at an early stage, this contribution is considering and evaluating the sustainable effects in a comprehensive assessment even before the physical start of product and material development. To this end, a procedure was developed, in which underlying methodology enables development engineers to identify hotspots at an early stage and to address and mitigate them early on. This way, challenges of tomorrow’s circular economy are already being addressed today and critical sustainability pitfalls can be avoided.
Key words: sustainability screening / printed electronics / design for environment / LCA / life cycle thinking
© F. Gehring et al., 2022
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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