Printed circuit boards: A review on the perspective of sustainability

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• This paper presents a literature review on printed circuit boards.
• Currently, PCBs are migrating from traditional Pb–Sn alloys to lead-free alloys.
• Some solutions to reduce and/or replace the solder are shown in the paper.
• The alternatives of eliminating the solder present initial solutions.
• The ways that electronic components are fixed still lack adequate solutions.

Modern life increasingly requires newer equipments and more technology. In addition, the fact that society is highly consumerist makes the amount of discarded equipment as well as the amount of waste from the manufacture of new products increase at an alarming rate. Printed circuit boards, which form the basis of the electronics industry, are technological waste of difficult disposal whose recycling is complex and expensive due to the diversity of materials and components and their difficult separation.Currently, printed circuit boards have a fixing problem, which is migrating from traditional Pb–Sn alloys to lead-free alloys without definite choice. This replacement is an attempt to minimize the problem of Pb toxicity, but it does not change the problem of separation of the components for later reuse and/or recycling and leads to other problems, such as temperature rise, delamination, flaws, risks of mechanical shocks and the formation of “whiskers”. This article presents a literature review on printed circuit boards, showing their structure and materials, the environmental problem related to the board, some the different alternatives for recycling, and some solutions that are being studied to reduce and/or replace the solder, in order to minimize the impact of solder on the printed circuit boards.

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