This report examines sustainable electronics innovations, throughout the printed circuit board (PCB) and semiconductor industries. It covers key manufacturing processes and materials, including granular market forecasts from 2025-2035 and featuring profiles of green electronics players and information gathered at SEMICON Europa and Electronica 2024. This report provides indispensable insight into innovations in the electronics industry. Energy and water usage in the semiconductor industry are set to grow at a CAGR of 12% and 8% respectively from 2025-2035, with efficient management strategies for both critical. The electronics market is huge, with integrated circuits (ICs) the 3rd most traded product globally, and there are huge opportunities for sustainable innovation.

Conventional electronics manufacturing is extremely wasteful, with many materials, chemicals and manufacturing processes harmful to the environment. This report explores the environmental impact of manufacturing PCBs and ICs, highlighting opportunities to mitigate potential damage to the environment. These include low temperature processing, optimization or elimination of superfluous wasteful steps, recycling and re-using materials where possible and adoption of novel approaches with potential to replace conventional manufacturing steps. PCB substrate materials are analyzed, including biodegradable and recyclable materials which could provide long term alternatives to currently dominant FR4. These include substrates and technologies such as polylactic acid, Soluboard®, Recyclad1G and ReUSE®.

 

Action currently being undertaken by many well-known electronics manufacturers to improve the sustainability and efficiency of their products is also explored. These include Samsung, TSMC, GlobalFoundries and Intel, among many others. This includes water management strategies for semiconductor manufacturing, with over 500 billion liters of water used annually by the industry.

 

The report assesses sustainable methods of electronics manufacturing and concentrates on innovations within PCBs and ICs. The report evaluates how sustainable innovation can drive forward a new era of green electronics and covers different materials and manufacturing processes that can deliver effective long-term sustainability improvements. Covering each key stage of the value chain for PCB and IC manufacturing, the report identifies areas that can benefit from innovation. These are compared not just in terms of the emissions, materials, and water consumption but also in terms of scalability and cost to implement. For ICs, it covers wafer preparation from ingots, wafer oxidation, etching, photolithography, surface doping, metallization, packaging and water management. For PCBs, the report covers design options, substrate choices, patterning and metallization and component attachment materials and processes. End of life technologies and processes are then explored for all electronic devices.