Electronic Waste Recycling

Book excerpt: The consumption of technological products has increased in recent years owing to the modern industrial revolution, where people continue to acquire semiconductor device–based innovative hardware. However, this lifestyle may not be sustainable in the coming decades because it creates the global issue of electronic waste, caused by either mass-manufactured products or hardware that has worked in the past but is outdated now. This book presents accessible and organized literature on electronic waste recycling as an alternative route to engineering and realizing functional devices based on unusual material properties. It is a comprehensible study guide on the fundamentals of electronic waste usage and describes all aspects related to the state-of-the-art production and consumption cycles and the recycling of materials. The book explains the use of waste materials and the ways in which their unusual properties can be the basis of innovative devices for signal processing, sensing schemes, and reconfigurable operation.