Biodegradable Polymers for Reducing Electronic Waste

Plastics enable our modern standard of life from safety and shelter to advanced technologies in electronics and aerospace applications. Thus, we must accelerate fundamental research to innovate advanced polymer materials with new properties. Our modern lifestyle is coming at a severe cost, however, with serious and legitimate economic, energy, and environmental concerns in using plastic. For example, electronic devices, while primarily thought of as agglomeration of metals and semiconductors, are often comprised largely of plastic—up to 90% plastic in some cases. Unfortunately, however, ~50 million tons of electronic waste (e-waste) is generated annually with up to 80% of that waste expected to reach landfills. With the emergence of new electronic technologies, including flexible electronics for human health monitoring, identification of more bio-friendly materials is critical to offset their environmental impact. To this end, the development and integration of degradable materials for wearables can facilitate the decomposition of electronic devices when they are no longer needed. This talk focuses on the development of biodegradable polyesters using step-growth polymerization and incorporation of naturally occurring materials such as polysaccharides. The purpose is to move toward identification of new materials to replace non-degradable plastics in flexible electronics. Included in this talk is a discussion of the synthetic pathways for formation of high glass transition temperature (≥ 80 °C) polyfluorene derivatives and use of polysaccharides with respect to their corresponding structure-property relationships. A demonstration of their use in flexible electronics as either an active component or encapsulating layer, followed by a study of their degradation pathways will also be covered.