A green spark in electronics Electrochemical innovations for a sustainable printed circuit board industry

Printed circuit boards (PCBs) are an integral part in our modern society. All of our tools, including cars, computers, microwaves and air-conditioning units among others, contain these vital components. PCBs use copper tracks to transfer electricity between the individual components. The current manufacturing process heavily relies on a top-down approach, where the substrate is first completely covered with copper and then all the undesired copper is selectively etched away. This is a highly wasteful process, generating large amounts of contaminated waste water containing dissolved copper and organics.
In this dissertation, I propose two alternatives to reduce the environmental impact of the PCB industry. Firstly, an alternative approach for waste water treatment is proposed based on the oxygen reduction reaction towards hydrogen peroxide with a nitrogen-doped carbon electrocatalyst. The in situ generated hydrogen peroxide is used to oxidize organic pollutants directly. With this method, transportation costs for hydrogen peroxide are diminished, while the catalyst is made from abundant reagents. The second alternative is to alter the manufacturing process completely. Instead of the top-down approach, I propose a bottom-up one where the copper tracks are selectively plated were needed. This technique, already known in the industry, does relay on expensive palladium catalysts, reducing the economic viability. By changing the atomic composition of the catalyst, its effectiveness is increased while the costs were simultaneously diminished.