Can You Design for Sustainability in Electronics?

Transcript

Can you design for sustainability?

Yes, and in electronics it starts at component level. At Force Technologies we practise sustainability through die extraction and re-manufacturing: recovering the original silicon die from obsolete or unavailable devices and re-assembling it into the package a customer's board expects, tested to the original specification. The device is not recycled for scrap value. It is reused as a working component, which is the highest-value outcome for any piece of electronics.

What does component-level reuse actually involve?

It means recovering the die, not just the material. Recycling electronics typically means shredding boards to reclaim metals, which destroys every functional part in the process. Component reuse works one level up: the packaged device is carefully processed, the silicon die inside is extracted intact, and that die is re-manufactured into a new, fully tested device. The table below shows where reuse sits against the alternatives.

Why are customers now asking for longer-term solutions?

Because sustainability is moving from the recycling bin to the drawing board. A growing number of the engineers we work with are no longer contacting us after a part goes end-of-life. They are designing for sustainability from the start: building reuse, re-manufacture and long-term storage into the component strategy of platforms that will serve for 20 to 30 years. For long-life sectors such as aerospace, defence, rail and industrial control, this thinking solves two problems at once. It reduces waste, and it protects the programme against obsolescence, because a part that can be stored, recovered or rebuilt is a part that cannot hold the platform to ransom when production stops.

How do I build this into my own programme?

Start the conversation at design stage, not at the end-of-life notice. Tell us the platform's expected service life and the components you expect to outlive their manufacturers. From there the options are last-time buys with controlled nitrogen storage, die banking for future re-manufacture, and, where nothing survives, form-fit-function replacement design. Force Technologies has been doing this work since 1986 from our UK facility, certified to AS9100 Rev D.