David Savastano, Editor07.21.21
Editor’s Note: This is the third in a series of article on sustainability and the flexible and printed electronics industry. The first, the overview, can be found here. The second, on reuse and recycling, can be found here. The third, on the benefits of flexible and printed electronics industry in terms of sustainability, can be found here.
Sustainability is a topic of increasing interest worldwide, and in the growing area of flexible and printed electronics, there are important benefits to the technology. However, there are also challenges that need to be met.
Industry leaders report they are hearing questions about sustainability from their customers.
Melissa Grupen-Shemansky, CTO for SEMI, and executive director of SEMI FlexTech and SEMI NBMC, said that SEMI believes the biggest challenges will be reducing the waste stream of critical solid-state components and creating a recyclable or biodegradable substrate material.
“We hope to create and build awareness of the possibilities and take a leadership position by potentially funding strong and viable projects on this topic,” Dr. Grupen-Shemansky said. “In addition to projects, our public forums have focused more and more on sustainable electronics, efficient manufacturing and using the intelligence gained by smart manufacturing to adjust processes to use less water, less electricity and reduce downtime.”
VITO researcher Kévin Le Blevennec, a team member with the OE-A sustainability group, reported that the biggest challenge is to set the right scope of any life cycle analysis, as just looking at a section of the cycle results in a skewed picture.
“It is indeed important to determine to which extent the recyclability of products including/embedding printed electronics can be affected,” Le Blevennec added. “Sometimes it is not worth for the environment to try to recycle 100% of materials at all costs (environmental and economic). Higher gains can be found by preventing food waste and improving supply chain logistic, compared to the loss of recyclability of the packaging for instance.
“All players along the value chain or better the circular economy needs to work together in order to establish technologies that provide the best benefit while still being economically viable,” Le Blevennec noted. “Multi-stakeholder collaboration, not only to look at the sustainability of printed electronics themselves (which is essential), but also found the best use cases to use printed electronics for solving sustainability issues (food waste, obsolete products, etc.).”
Rob Frueh, senior business development manager for Brewer Science, pointed to materials as well as infrastructure needs.
“One is the materials, mainly the heavy metals and fluorinated compounds found in many devices,” added Frueh. “Another is the infrastructure; this is a very cost-driven industry and there must be an incentive to recycle. Another challenge is the continued work and awareness around where and in what applications our products are used in.”
Stephan Kube, Heliatek’s head of marketing, sees end-of-life treatment as the biggest challenges ahead when it comes to sustainability in flexible and printed electronics.
“Probably the end-of-life treatment, to find an ecological and economic reasonable approach,” Kube added. “Organic electronics are still relatively young, but very different to standard electronics. They are mainly categorized like standard electronics in terms of regulations and requirements, but beside the functionality they are built very different inside. To reflect this in regulations and laws is a big challenge for the entire industry, we believe.”
Dr. Florian Ullrich, business developer with InnovationLab, said that the biggest challenge is to balance the overall lifecycle of the application, including knowing how many resources are in, how long it will be in operation and what will happen at the end-of-life stage.
“[You need a] comprehensive design of products that fit to the application, only producing an electronic product if there is a clear and balanced pathway for the end-of-life (e.g. recovery, recycling, biodegradation, etc)” Dr. Ullrich added. “Doing this and making a profit is a challenging task.”
Imprint Energy’s batteries are made of zinc and manganese oxide, which is also a benefit in terms of environmental impact.
“More than 80% of a battery’s carbon footprint comes from how its key materials are mined or processed,” Imprint Energy CEO Christine Ho concluded. “Zinc materials are at least three times lower in environmental impact to mine than lithium. In theory, lithium could also be printed, but it is hypersensitive to the environment, so manufacturers need cleanrooms and dry rooms which require larger spaces and electricity overhead.”
How companies respond to these challenges is of great importance.
“The challenges around sustainability can best be approached from within, through joint commitments with our partners and customers,” said Frueh. “A great example has been some of our current work through grant-funded efforts, specific to the field of extended product life management.”
“We need to educate about the new technologies, their advantages and their differentiation to standard technologies. With more products from the organic electronics on the market, awareness will raise,” Kube added. “I think they can be a valuable element for a better and greener future. Our organic solar films will help to transform the energy generation towards cleaner solutions.”
Sustainability and the Future
Ultimately, flexible and printed electronics can play a role in creating a sustainable future.
“The smart IoT devices made with our batteries are real multipliers for sustainability impact,” Ho concluded. “Not only do our batteries and devices have a better carbon footprint themselves, but the applications they’re used in – like better shipping and less food waste – drive CO2 mitigation well beyond the devices themselves.”
Dr. Ullrich observed that most of the benefits will probably not come in the short term.
“As the technology is relatively new and companies compete for market coverage, sustainability is going to be in a second or third place,” he added. “The risk of the cost-efficiency of PE is that it can produce waste really fast. On the other hand, cost and energy reduction by making use of light-weight components and reducing the usage of rare and poisonous materials like in conventional batteries with carbon based inks helps.
“Furthermore, novel applications can at least contribute to more sustainability, e.g. in the case of battery health monitoring, where the usage of printed sensors can prolong battery lifetime by 30%. Having completely biodegradable electronics will certainly take some more years, but OE caries this opportunity for the future,” Dr. Ullrich concluded.
Dr. Grupen-Shemansky noted that more sensors create a better world, and by making sensors active and available on flexible and printed substrates, we reduce inefficiencies across a host of commercial, industrial and military activities.
“Some of those inefficiencies are identifying failures before they catastrophically fail,” added Dr. Grupen-Shemansky. A”nother would be monitoring health to identify potential issues and take steps for prevention earlier in ones’ life. In the field of logistics, there are many inefficiencies which sensors and lightweight antennas can prevent.”
Le Blevennec noted that PE and FHE enable completely new applications that are not possible with conventional electronics.
“The European Commission, through the European Green Deal, has recently highlighted the need to address the twin challenges of the green and digital transitions,” Le Blevennec added. “If driven by those multi-stakeholder collaborations, printed electronics could be considered as an enabler and be used to generate data that the sustainability ‘world’ need (e.g. track and trace product, actual product conditions, …)
Sustainability is a topic of increasing interest worldwide, and in the growing area of flexible and printed electronics, there are important benefits to the technology. However, there are also challenges that need to be met.
Industry leaders report they are hearing questions about sustainability from their customers.
Melissa Grupen-Shemansky, CTO for SEMI, and executive director of SEMI FlexTech and SEMI NBMC, said that SEMI believes the biggest challenges will be reducing the waste stream of critical solid-state components and creating a recyclable or biodegradable substrate material.
“We hope to create and build awareness of the possibilities and take a leadership position by potentially funding strong and viable projects on this topic,” Dr. Grupen-Shemansky said. “In addition to projects, our public forums have focused more and more on sustainable electronics, efficient manufacturing and using the intelligence gained by smart manufacturing to adjust processes to use less water, less electricity and reduce downtime.”
VITO researcher Kévin Le Blevennec, a team member with the OE-A sustainability group, reported that the biggest challenge is to set the right scope of any life cycle analysis, as just looking at a section of the cycle results in a skewed picture.
“It is indeed important to determine to which extent the recyclability of products including/embedding printed electronics can be affected,” Le Blevennec added. “Sometimes it is not worth for the environment to try to recycle 100% of materials at all costs (environmental and economic). Higher gains can be found by preventing food waste and improving supply chain logistic, compared to the loss of recyclability of the packaging for instance.
“All players along the value chain or better the circular economy needs to work together in order to establish technologies that provide the best benefit while still being economically viable,” Le Blevennec noted. “Multi-stakeholder collaboration, not only to look at the sustainability of printed electronics themselves (which is essential), but also found the best use cases to use printed electronics for solving sustainability issues (food waste, obsolete products, etc.).”
Rob Frueh, senior business development manager for Brewer Science, pointed to materials as well as infrastructure needs.
“One is the materials, mainly the heavy metals and fluorinated compounds found in many devices,” added Frueh. “Another is the infrastructure; this is a very cost-driven industry and there must be an incentive to recycle. Another challenge is the continued work and awareness around where and in what applications our products are used in.”
Stephan Kube, Heliatek’s head of marketing, sees end-of-life treatment as the biggest challenges ahead when it comes to sustainability in flexible and printed electronics.
“Probably the end-of-life treatment, to find an ecological and economic reasonable approach,” Kube added. “Organic electronics are still relatively young, but very different to standard electronics. They are mainly categorized like standard electronics in terms of regulations and requirements, but beside the functionality they are built very different inside. To reflect this in regulations and laws is a big challenge for the entire industry, we believe.”
Dr. Florian Ullrich, business developer with InnovationLab, said that the biggest challenge is to balance the overall lifecycle of the application, including knowing how many resources are in, how long it will be in operation and what will happen at the end-of-life stage.
“[You need a] comprehensive design of products that fit to the application, only producing an electronic product if there is a clear and balanced pathway for the end-of-life (e.g. recovery, recycling, biodegradation, etc)” Dr. Ullrich added. “Doing this and making a profit is a challenging task.”
Imprint Energy’s batteries are made of zinc and manganese oxide, which is also a benefit in terms of environmental impact.
“More than 80% of a battery’s carbon footprint comes from how its key materials are mined or processed,” Imprint Energy CEO Christine Ho concluded. “Zinc materials are at least three times lower in environmental impact to mine than lithium. In theory, lithium could also be printed, but it is hypersensitive to the environment, so manufacturers need cleanrooms and dry rooms which require larger spaces and electricity overhead.”
How companies respond to these challenges is of great importance.
“The challenges around sustainability can best be approached from within, through joint commitments with our partners and customers,” said Frueh. “A great example has been some of our current work through grant-funded efforts, specific to the field of extended product life management.”
“We need to educate about the new technologies, their advantages and their differentiation to standard technologies. With more products from the organic electronics on the market, awareness will raise,” Kube added. “I think they can be a valuable element for a better and greener future. Our organic solar films will help to transform the energy generation towards cleaner solutions.”
Sustainability and the Future
Ultimately, flexible and printed electronics can play a role in creating a sustainable future.
“The smart IoT devices made with our batteries are real multipliers for sustainability impact,” Ho concluded. “Not only do our batteries and devices have a better carbon footprint themselves, but the applications they’re used in – like better shipping and less food waste – drive CO2 mitigation well beyond the devices themselves.”
Dr. Ullrich observed that most of the benefits will probably not come in the short term.
“As the technology is relatively new and companies compete for market coverage, sustainability is going to be in a second or third place,” he added. “The risk of the cost-efficiency of PE is that it can produce waste really fast. On the other hand, cost and energy reduction by making use of light-weight components and reducing the usage of rare and poisonous materials like in conventional batteries with carbon based inks helps.
“Furthermore, novel applications can at least contribute to more sustainability, e.g. in the case of battery health monitoring, where the usage of printed sensors can prolong battery lifetime by 30%. Having completely biodegradable electronics will certainly take some more years, but OE caries this opportunity for the future,” Dr. Ullrich concluded.
Dr. Grupen-Shemansky noted that more sensors create a better world, and by making sensors active and available on flexible and printed substrates, we reduce inefficiencies across a host of commercial, industrial and military activities.
“Some of those inefficiencies are identifying failures before they catastrophically fail,” added Dr. Grupen-Shemansky. A”nother would be monitoring health to identify potential issues and take steps for prevention earlier in ones’ life. In the field of logistics, there are many inefficiencies which sensors and lightweight antennas can prevent.”
Le Blevennec noted that PE and FHE enable completely new applications that are not possible with conventional electronics.
“The European Commission, through the European Green Deal, has recently highlighted the need to address the twin challenges of the green and digital transitions,” Le Blevennec added. “If driven by those multi-stakeholder collaborations, printed electronics could be considered as an enabler and be used to generate data that the sustainability ‘world’ need (e.g. track and trace product, actual product conditions, …)
