Hsu, Jeremy. “Building Soluble Circuits To Help End E-Waste.” popsci.com. Popular Science, 9 May 2014. Web. 9 June 2014. http://www.popsci.com/article/science/building-soluble-circuits-help-end-e-waste?dom=PSC&loc=recent&lnk=5&con=building-soluble-circuits-to-help-end-ewaste
John Rogers, a scientist from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has invented a type of silicon ribbon thin enough to dissolve in water in roughly ten days. Rogers’ creation is a response to the amount of e-waste being produced annually, roughly 43 pounds generated per person globally. Rogers’ ribbons safely decompose and are harmless to humans. This development is marketed toward smart biomedical devises but Rogers’ main goal is to reduce the amount of e-waste being produced globally. His product is biodegradable and would definitely reduce the amount of e-waste in the environment, but I wonder how expensive it would be to produce his technology on a global scale. Rogers is in the process of engineering dissolvable circuits and antennas and I’d also like to know how his technology would be applied to common household products that make up the bulk of e-waste i.e. cell phones, ipods, etc. This invention seems promising but there also needs to be cooperation between major manufacturing companies and an agreement to use his biodegradable ribbons (these ribbons would also have to operate as well as existing non-degradable parts found in common technology). I’d like to know more about how his invention can replace existing parts in cell phones and ipods and how easily corporations would embrace using these environmentally friendly parts.
