Deliciously. After a few years of continuous use they're golden brown, air baked and can come in BBQ, sour cream and onion or dill pickle flavours.I wonder how well they sustain heat. ICs can run hot.
That's addressed explicitly in TFA.Until someone spills their hot coffee on the circuit board.
Same. While having waste that breaks down easily is good, it's easy to focus too hard on that and forget that you also want it to hold together before it becomes waste. E.g. the people behind paper straws seem to have forgotten that latter part...I was shaking my head at the title until I read the dissolving process requires very hot water. Intriguing.
But a whole lot of especially consumer electronics - the kind that are often tossed after a year or two - never see anywhere near that environment. Obviously not for use in vehicles, aircraft and other more critical situations but that tablet that is going to get tossed after a few years just might be a good use case.90°C in hot water sounds impressive, but the chips on your board can reach 90°C. Is a computer on the edge of overheating in a humid environment going to start delaminating?
Don't get me wrong; it's cool stuff, but this board wouldn't survive the accelerated life testing (an autoclave) that you generally run computer components through. I just can't help but be skeptical of the lifetime survivability of something that will reach its delamination temperature and at that point will just need water, which the air is full of in many places, to catastrophically fail.
I think we'd need to know a lot more before jumping to the conclusion that airborne humidity under high heat for short periods of time will result in huge failures.90°C in hot water sounds impressive, but the chips on your board can reach 90°C. Is a computer on the edge of overheating in a humid environment going to start delaminating?
Don't get me wrong; it's cool stuff, but this board wouldn't survive the accelerated life testing (an autoclave) that you generally run computer components through. I just can't help but be skeptical of the lifetime survivability of something that will reach its delamination temperature and at that point will just need water, which the air is full of in many places, to catastrophically fail.
Single and double means the dielectric constant isn't likely such a big issue either; usually you're at more than two layers if you're doing high speed.The first place my mind goes is all the places this could go wrong, but obviously it survives reflow temperatures, and their website says it has the similar flame retardant properties to other leading substrates (presumably FR-4, where that's literally what the FR means...) They also say it's been designed to deal with water-based PCB manufacturing processes (since etchant is usually aqueous and hot, another concern) and high humidity.
Their website is light on other details that are rather important to PCB manufacturing, such as what sort of stack-ups you can have (for example, modern motherboards are often 12-16 layers of copper and FR-4) and how well controlled the dielectric constant is, which is important with high speed stuff. The fiber component makes me think very dense stackups may not work, and in their FAQ they even say they're investigating only single and double sided PCBs. Which means these aren't coming to your laptop or desktop main boards any time soon, but could be useful in the power supply or other less complicated pieces. Lots of stuff doesn't need more than a double-sided board.
Would I drop this into a product for a customer right now? Nope. But if my board houses would offer it as an option, I'd certainly start playing with it to see how well it works and how it compares on other manufacturability concerns. Seems like an intriguing idea and a useful step forward to a more recyclable electronics industry.
I mean, to be fair - it's not uncommon to see early prototypes get announced with some glaring flaw that's going to be solved "later" (or often actually "never", and it never becomes a production-ready product). Even if they thought of a problem, it doesn't mean they solved it. Skepticism is reasonable.I think we'd need to know a lot more before jumping to the conclusion that airborne humidity under high heat for short periods of time will result in huge failures.
I love Ars but this thread is giving me a "No shit, don't you think they've thought of that?" vibe
Do you often drop your phone into 90C or hotter water?Oh wow this would make getting your phone or anything electronic you get wet, even if turned off, way more expensive to fix.
Oh, no doubt the porn industry will solve that problem in short order, if these boards become commonplace.Oh wow this would make getting your phone or anything electronic you get wet, even if turned off, way more expensive to fix.
I'm with you, but I would also expect that a company making a folding phone would have definitely thought about what happens when you open and close it, or considered that it might be used outside of a clean room, and that a scientific journal might have thought to check someone's credentials or even read their name out loud before appointing them editor.I think we'd need to know a lot more before jumping to the conclusion that airborne humidity under high heat for short periods of time will result in huge failures.
I love Ars but this thread is giving me a "No shit, don't you think they've thought of that?" vibe
"wouldn't survive?" based on what data? It's pure conjecture at this point. Material science is crazy complex and some of yall are sounding like the "Why doesnt SpaceX just use parachutes" crowd
Considering that after shredding the PCB's, a tangled mess of bits and pieces is what you get anyhow, only with pieces of PCB's mixed in, you'd think not having the pieces of PCB's mixed in would be a good thing.That's nice that the board dissolves and things fall off it, but how does that help de-solder the components from the copper traces and vias? (The important part that makes the boards work and is missing in these glamor shots) I'm guessing that you just end up with a giant tangle of ICs, resistors, capacitors all globbed up in a tangle.
Me too. Still, it is Ars and many of the responses make it clear they "had thought of that". Thanks to adespoton, NDHolmes and others.I love Ars but this thread is giving me a "No shit, don't you think they've thought of that?" vibe
DIY mechanical keyboards would be a great application for this material, especially since the keyswitches themselves can often cost $1 each or more. I dabble in atypical keyboard layouts as a hobby, including designing boards in KiCAD (or altering other people's open-source designs) for manufacture by PCBWay and similar companies.If they're looking for a place to start, custom board houses like PCBWay would be a good one. If I could take a board I no longer need, or a failed one, and drop it in boiling water to take the board apart and make it easier to harvest components, that seems like a win to me