Improving the sustainability of printed circuit boards through additive printing

A life-cycle assessment (LCA) was performed on Printed Circuit Boards (PCB) made using the traditional manufacturing approach with FR-4 substrates. LCA is vital as it allows for comparison of products in order to design it so that it has the lowest impact on the environment. The scope was cradle to grave, including embodied impacts, transportation, energy used during manufacturing, waste material generated and disposal. The impact of different processing steps were considered, all scored using the ReCiPe Endpoint. Results show that consideration should be given to PCB design, including number of layers used in multilayer boards. Furthermore, the study investigated the impact of changing the manufacturing methodology by considering an additive printed circuit board. A significant reduction in environmental impact is seen by moving to either polymeric or paper based substrates.