Design for recycling in electronic manufacturing: enabling circularity and lower impact manufacturing through heterogeneous integration and lower impact recovery

Abstract The adoption of ‘Design-for-Recycling’ (DfR) approaches for manufacturing Electrical and Electronic Equipment is still in its infancy. However, growing interest in DfR is driven by its potential to address the global challenge of waste from electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) and reduce the environmental footprint of electronics. In this study, a DfR approach that enables up to 99% material recovery using scalable laboratory methods is presented. Through Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), a 90% reduction in environmental impact compared to conventional Flame-Retardant Level 4 (FR4)-based printed circuit board assemblies manufacturing is demonstrated. To achieve this, a fully additive process is adopted with Heterogeneous integration using Ultra-Precise Deposition (UPD) to provide a more compact form factor with lower material use than conventional approaches. For recycling trials, selective recovery using Iron Chloride (FeCl₃) was adopted, enabling silver (Ag) to be recovered by mechanical filtration. The LCA results indicate a notable reduction in environmental impact and human toxicity, primarily due to the lower substrate footprint, reduced reagent use, the ease of disassembly and resource retention enabled by the DfR design. The results show that the integration of DfR principles with recycling establishes a new standard for electronics manufacturing, where technological performance and environmental accountability are simultaneously pursued.