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Sustainable electronics product design and manufacturing: State of art review

• Cite this article
• https://doi.org/10.1080/19397038.2021.1900448

Introduction

Review methodology, review on product orientation of sustainable electronics, review on the material orientation of sustainable electronics, review on process orientation of sustainable electronics, review on modelling for sustainable electronic products, application of sustainable manufacturing to the electronics sector, framework for sustainable electronic product development, important findings and discussions, conclusions, study limitations.

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The paper reviews the studies on sustainable electronics reported in the literature and determines opportunities through which the expansion of sustainable electronic products is possible. The sustainable growth of electronics products from product, process and material dimensions, and modelling of sustainable electronics were reviewed based on 57 papers from the literature. The review findings were used to identify the methods for improvement of the sustainability of electronic products. The study proposes a sustainability framework for electronic product design. The significant finding of the investigation reported in this review is that the deployment efforts of sustainability in electronics design and manufacturing are in the nascent stages and the attempts enhance the effectiveness of the implementation of sustainable manufacturing. The study investigates research studies from the viewpoint of implementing sustainable electronics product design and manufacturing. Besides, the deployment of the proposed framework to other organisations could also be validated. The findings of this literature investigation specified the need for enhancing the usefulness of sustainable electronics design and manufacturing approach. This study logically presents sustainable electronics product design and manufacturing under four critical perspectives. The study recognises research gaps and proposes methods for improvement.

• Sustainability
• product design
• electronics manufacturing
• environmental design
• material selection
• process improvement

Sustainable development has turned out to be a primary global concern due to the potential rise in the exhaustion of non-renewable supplies and a rise in eco disposals (Esmaeilian, Behdad, and Wang Citation 2016 ). Green approaches and renewable sources could be used to mitigate the effect of carbon emissions on the economic growth (Khan et al. Citation 2018a ). The firms could increase environmental and financial performance through green practices in their supply chain and thus overall organisational performance (Khan et al. Citation 2018b ). The regulatory bodies and corporate sector must uphold social and environmental sustainability. Significant green ideology factors are government subsidies, tax exemptions, environmental‐friendly policies, usage of renewable energy and reduction in consumption of fossil fuels (Khan et al. Citation 2019 ). Approaches to integrate Industry 4.0 with circular supply chain must be formulated to transform operations to become more sustainable (Kumar et al. Citation 2020 ).

Green manufacturing/sustainability issues are some significant manufacturing challenges (Bennett Citation 2014 ). Sustainability theory highlights the development of environmentally benign products and processes by economic and societal characteristics (Sikdar Citation 2007 ; Cockerill Citation 2004 ). Since industries utilise plenty of energy and supplies, government impels organisations to implement sustainability to minimise resource utilisation (Yagi and Halada Citation 2001 ). With environmental policies becoming more inflexible, organisations are compelled to meet the requirement for sustainable products. Therefore, contemporary firms are implementing sustainable manufacturing.

Meanwhile, the electronics sector has witnessed rapid growth in the current decade due to technological developments and enhanced demand (MacK Citation 2011 ). The increasing need for environmental well-being (Chiang et al. Citation 2011 ) and attributes of safety and sustainability are inducing the development of the industry. Haapala et al. ( Citation 2013 ) investigated sustainable manufacturing theories, methods, and techniques. The authors discussed various sustainability issues and reported that electronics production causes emissions in the form of toxic and greenhouse gases. Simiari, Shojaee, and Oladghaffari ( Citation 2018 ) discussed end-of-life management of electronic products, as it contributes significantly to the product sustainability and hence, authors derived the disposal strategies. Regulatory bodies have started providing incentives and awareness among people for e-waste management (Jafari, Heydari, and Keramati Citation 2017 ), thereby endorsing the need for sustainable product development.

Sustainable electronics product design and manufacturing is essential as the manufacturers are concentrating on developing environmentally friendlier products (Vinodh et al. Citation 2017 ). Electronics industry significantly contributes to the economic progress of a country (Singh et al. Citation 2018b ). The contemporary electronics manufacturers have been implementing sustainability principles to achieve improvements in ecological, financial and social aspects. The sustainability of processes/products needs to be concentrated to produce environmentally friendlier products. Tischner and Hora ( Citation 2019 ) discussed that the need for sustainable electronic product design starts with demand and can be accomplished by exploring sustainable eco-efficient solutions. The authors stressed on usage of sustainable materials, reduction in energy consumption, design for recycling, and producing less toxic items. Recent studies have emphasised the applicability of sustainable design, manufacturing and disposal strategies for electronic products (Seker ( Citation 2020 ); Ilbahar, Cebi, and Kahraman ( Citation 2020 ) and Thomas ( Citation 2020 )).

There exists a critical need to deploy sustainable manufacturing to achieve the benefits of increased process efficiencies and also minimised environmental impact. This article presents an outlook on the trends of sustainable manufacturing in the electronics industry by a rigorous review of articles. The article also highlights the importance of sustainable manufacturing of electronics and research avenues associated with it.

Sustainable development is predominantly classified into material, process and system dimensions (Jayal et al. Citation 2010 ). Latest studies reviewed sustainable product design and development (Hassan et al. Citation 2016 ; Ahmad et al. Citation 2018 ). Although the studies concentrated on eco-design tools and reviewed Triple-bottom line concept, studies on the electronic domain were scarcely discussed. Therefore, this article is targeted to present a comprehensive and generic review of state-of-the-art tools and case studies concerned with electronics product design and manufacturing.

What are the evolving research issues on sustainability and its application?

What is the systematic framework for the deployment of sustainability in the field of electronics product design and manufacturing?

In finding out the past contributions to the topic and scope for sustainable manufacturing, literature on product, process and material orientations of sustainability and modelling of sustainable electronic products have been reviewed exclusively and discussed. This research investigates the application of sustainability in electronics product design and manufacturing with triple bottom line perspective. The objective of this study is to strengthen existing insights on literature pertaining to sustainable electronics product design and manufacturing. The review also emphasises important conclusions to researchers and practitioners in search of achieving understanding on the discussed themes and to facilitate obtaining future research directions.

The unique aspect of this article is that it presents a state-of-the-art review of sustainable design and manufacturing of electronic products. It presents a sustainable framework for the product design and manufacturing of electronic products.

Figure 1. Review methodology

The search was restricted to sustainable manufacturing research articles about electronics manufacturing to present a complete review of the usage of sustainable manufacturing approach in the electronics sector. This literature review considered a specific time interval (2003–2020), to absorb the noteworthy advancements of sustainable manufacturing reported across various time horizons.

You et al. ( Citation 2016 ) investigated ways to minimise environmental impacts of consumer electronic products through design. The authors devised design strategies such as material selection, disassembly design and eco labelling for developing sustainable consumer electronics products. They followed literature review, analyses and case studies.

Mathiyazhagan, Sengupta, and Mathivathanan ( Citation 2019 ) conducted a systematic review and identified following challenges in electronics industry: short lifespan of electronic equipment leading to increased quantities, poor waste collection infrastructure, increased cost of crude resource recovery technologies, poor product design, improper regulatory and implementation frameworks, and unlawful export of e-waste to developing countries.

The number of publications for each year has increased sharply inline with the preceding year which indicates the growing interest of academicians and practitioners towards sustainable electronics product design and manufacturing. The major reason for the increasing interest can be stringent legislative policies and legislations, which limit the organisations to practice conventional processes.

In addition to standard cost and consumer requirements, environmentally conscious product design practices enable sustainability in industries by considering ecology and resources worldwide. Since the early 2000s, several studies reported sustainable product design. It is essential to re-examine such reports based on the experience and understanding and discover the direction in which research should proceed further. Chiu and Chu ( Citation 2012 ) discussed a surfacing need for a logical method that can incorporate product, process, system and environmental scope while handling contradictory viewpoint of product development. Following are some important studies on sustainable development of electronics products.

Several studies such as Kaebernick, Kara,and, and Sun ( Citation 2003 ), Masui et al. ( Citation 2003 ), Lin et al. ( Citation 2004 ), Sakao ( Citation 2007 ), Bereketli, Genevois, and Ziya Ulukan ( Citation 2009 ), Lee and Lin ( Citation 2011 ), Wu and Ho ( Citation 2015 ), Younesi and Roghanian ( Citation 2015 ), Hassan et al. ( Citation 2016 ) and Vinodh et al. ( Citation 2017 ) analysed the application of QFD for sustainable electronics product design. The tool either used in its original form or integrated with other evaluation methods or problem-solving techniques is found to be most prominent method for sustainable electronics product design.

Other significant studies selected life cycle methods for sustainable electronics design. Gurauskienė and Varžinskas ( Citation 2006 ), Wu et al. ( Citation 2008 ), Yung et al. ( Citation 2011 ), Moberg et al. ( Citation 2014 ), Wang et al. ( Citation 2015 ) and Andrae et al. ( Citation 2016 ) used LCA solely or integrated with other techniques for sustainable electronic product design.

Iakovou et al. ( Citation 2009 ), De Silva et al. ( Citation 2009 ) deployed ranking methods for sustainable electronics product design. Van Erp et al. ( Citation 2020 ) followed a critical problem-solving technique and developed a cooling technology to facilitate the additional miniaturisation of electronics and significantly minimising energy consumption. Eliminating the necessity for large outer heat sinks, the proposed approach facilitated the development of incredibly compact power converters incorporated on a single chip.

Sustainable material selection is of greater importance in the contemporary manufacturing scenario, as it involves trade-offs among several measures including ecological aspects (Ljungberg Citation 2007 ). The approach could enable the manufacturing of products with the reduction of impact on the environment, lower cost and minimise the resources utilisation. Material assessment plays an important part in product lifecycle and results in sustainable development. Irimia-Vladu ( Citation 2014 ) emphasised the latest research developments in the material design of exceptional organic electronics devices. The research tried instigating ways for the manufacturing of eco-friendly electronic products which are inexpensive and energy-efficient and help in realising great functionalities. Following studies discussed the material orientation of sustainability concerning electronics product design and manufacturing.

Cao et al. ( Citation 2006 ) Masanet and Horvath ( Citation 2007 ), Chan and Tong ( Citation 2007 ), Liu et al. ( Citation 2014 ) Meyer and Katz ( Citation 2016 ), Manjunatheshwara and Vinodh ( Citation 2018 ) identified and assessed the sustainable criteria for material selection of electronic products. The alternatives were compared based on the selection criteria using MCDM, Grey decision-making and LCA methods.

Jahan et al. ( Citation 2010 ) presented a review of material comparison and selection techniques. The authors found that MCDM techniques can significantly improve material selection methodology. Therefore, an MCDM could be applied for sustainable material selection.

Grey theory is a computational approach for system analysis to handle uncertainty (Li, Yamaguchi, and Nagai Citation 2007 ). Prior studies applied Grey-based approach to solving MCDM problems with multiple criteria. However, the utilisation of Grey-based approach for material selection of electronics products needs to be explored further.

‘Process’ orientation of sustainable development is the significant cause of ecological damage (Culaba and Purvis Citation 1999 ). It is affected mostly due to the utilisation of renewable resources, energy expenditure, effluents, and liquid, solid, and gaseous discharges. Negative environmental impacts are a direct result of these changes. Hence, the attention of researchers worldwide has focused towards the development of sustainable processes (Thiriez and Gutowski Citation 2006 ).

Some significant studies that addressed process improvement include Andrae, Zou, and Liu ( Citation 2004 ), Ahluwalia and Nema ( Citation 2007 ), Duan et al. ( Citation 2009 ), Noon, Lee, and Cooper ( Citation 2011 ), Teehan and Kandlikar ( Citation 2013 ), Zink et al. ( Citation 2014 ), Chang, Lee, and Chen ( Citation 2014 ), Elduque et al. ( Citation 2014 ), Subramanian and Yung ( Citation 2017 ). The studies utilised LCA for evaluation of processes and significantly followed ISO 14040 guidelines.

Liu, Tanaka, and Matsui ( Citation 2009 ) demonstrated the economic assessment approach for the evaluation of classical recycling processes for different variants of waste Electronic Home Appliances (EHA) in China. Manual dismantling time and dismantled components flow were determined. Input and output material flows of recycling processes were mapped. Economic feasibility and profitability analysis for the management framework was done. The study intended to categorise the formal organisational framework with financial viability for discarded EHA in China.

Several critical concerns need to be tackled to realise how sustainable manufacturing can be achieved with the meticulousness of reason, focus, and objectives. Models of sustainable manufacturing concerning electronics have been demonstrated in different studies bridging the interactions between drivers, enablers, and resultants of sustainability. The studies of sustainability modelling concerning electronics product design and manufacturing have been discussed below.

Agus ( Citation 2005 ), Mittal and Sangwan ( Citation 2014 ), Sellitto and Hermann ( Citation 2019 ) used SEM to postulate hypotheses among relevant constructs based on the structural relationships. The studies determined the strength of the relationships among constructs. The studies could support policymakers and practitioners in developing policies and strategies for the deployment of sustainable manufacturing.

Govindan et al. ( Citation 2013 ), Tseng ( Citation 2013 ), Singh et al. ( Citation 2018b ), Singhal, Tripathy, and Jena ( Citation 2019 ) used ISM to perform a precise and complete analysis of criteria of electronics manufacturing. The straightforward visual analysis of the quadrant evaluation grid revealed benefits and drawbacks. The managerial inferences for resource allocation were depicted. Also, competitive spots were recognised, and further improvement strategies were presented. The method improved analysis using a linkage criteria quadrant. This allowed the management to concentrate on the criteria to fulfil eco necessities to advance their performance.

Ocampo and Clark ( Citation 2015 ) developed a selection process of sustainable manufacturing initiatives with the US NIST-based evaluation framework using AHP. It was concluded from the prioritisation that, lean six sigma scheme ranked higher of all the sustainable manufacturing initiatives. The study enabled the appropriate distribution of resources of the semiconductor manufacturing firm and rapid progress of the firm to the needs of the sustainability.

Malek and Desai ( Citation 2019 ) identified and prioritised the barriers of sustainable manufacturing using Best–Worst (BW) method. The authors categorised the barriers. The major social factors were requirement of awareness of consumers and need for corporate social and environmental responsibility. Less prominent factors were lack of consideration of human factors, fear of competitors taking advantage, lack of balance among environment, social and economic benefits, and resistance to culture change.

Singh et al. ( Citation 2018a ) developed a theoretical framework for the sustainable growth and development of electronics manufacturing industries. The authors identified political, economic, technological and social aspects influencing sustainable manufacturing.

Case studies and practical implementation

Table 1. case studies on the usage of tools.

Electronic products can be categorised into three major clusters based on their applications: Consumer electronics, Industrial electronics and automotive electronics. Consumer electronics primarily covers the complete variety of electronic devices, including sound systems, home automation, computing and low-power electronics to multimedia systems, to mainly accomplish or facilitate data processing and communication through electronics, together with display and transmission (Li, Zeng, Stevels, Citation 2015 ). Andrae and Andersen ( Citation 2010 ) carried out an extensive review of studies on LCA of consumer electronics including desktop computers and laptops, mobile phones and TVs, over the period 1997–2010. The authors concluded that the studies lacked transparency and resulted in difficulty in benchmarking. Van Heddeghem et al. ( Citation 2014 ) emphasised the necessity for energy-efficiency research across different ICT categories such as communication networks, PCs, and data centres. The authors discussed the method of computing electricity usage in these categories. The study identified the necessity for energy efficiency research across all these domains. Li, Zeng, Stevels, ( Citation 2015 ) presented a review of eco-design applicable to consumer electronics. The challenges listed by the authors included, higher demand for consumer electronics letting the resources down, increased demand for cleaner production, innovative materials and technologies offering new challenges for eco-design in production, utilisation and logistics phases, development of disassembly and remanufacturing policies, bridging the gap between different stakeholders. Hankammer et al. ( Citation 2018 ) investigated the 3P (People, Profit, Planet) potential of modular and customisable smartphones. The authors determined that the customisation and modular properties could increase the product life cycle and influence socio-cultural product traits respectively.

From the studies, it can be noted that a significant number of studies until recent times were made on mobiles and PCs. However, there is a need for carrying out considerable research on other less focused consumer electronics like tablet devices, smartphones, smartwatches and other latest fast-moving gadgets. LCAs, energy efficiency analyses are essential to track and maintain electronics product sustainability.

Industrial electronics is an extensive professional field that comprises electronic control systems, industrial instrumentation and aerospace or medical technology. Transportation, security and telecommunications are also connected with industrial electronics. Sustainable product design, disassembly modelling and planning concerning industrial electronics products have been carried out. Extensive sustainability studies need to be conducted in the industrial electronics domain. Case studies of products similar to rotary switches and transformers need to be carried out. Similarly, sustainability in automotive electronics domain needs attention and there exists considerable scope for conducting sustainability studies of automotive electronics products.

Analysis of tools

Table 2. tools used for different life cycle phases.

Design and manufacturing and EoL analysis have been widely covered in the studies. This gate-grave approach could be further expanded to cradle-cradle approach to achieve better results of sustainability.

A generic framework has been developed by the authors for sustainable electronic product development based on the literature review with insights for improvements across three pillars economy, environment and society.

Figure 2. Proposed sustainable electronics product design and manufacturing framework

The sequential steps of the proposed framework are as follows:

Problem definition: Define objective, list significant enablers, criteria and attributes to set the benchmark

Modelling: Establish interrelationship among various factors of sustainable electronics manufacturing

Suggested Tools: ISM, SEM

Prioritisation: Three orientations Product, Process, Material dimensions of sustainability are prioritised based on Environmental, Economy and Social criteria.

Suggested Tools: MCDM techniques

Implementation: Implementation in the order of prioritised three orientations

ECQFD for design

DfE guidelines application

Material orientation

Multi-objective modelling techniques for material selection

Energy efficiency assessment

LCA and disassembly for process improvement

Evaluation: Effects of the implementation must be assessed in terms of sustainability criteria and benchmark data

The framework has to be validated over a series of case studies for electronics products of different categories and has to be improved substantially.

Analysing the outcomes articulated from sustainable manufacturing of electronics gives an idea that ecological impact minimisation and financial benefits dominate over societal aspects. However, the information on the means to attain these improvements remains less explored.

Sustainable design framework necessitates significant amendments in managerial and operational dealings. Product systems are remarkably interconnected to each other and form a complex network which is most difficult for the product development team to sort out. Performance, cost, legal and cultural aspects should be effectively dealt with product designs to pursue sustainable development objectives effectively. Environmental objectives cannot be achieved separately without these factors. Approaches to minimise ecological impediments of a product system are commonly familiar to the designers. The critical challenge in product design is to select policies and merge them into designs that convince the full range of necessities.

Material selection for electronics products is a complex process which demands competence in different areas such as manufacturing, design, administration, and marketing. Material selection usually involves a high amount of trade-offs among several deciding attributes.

The deployment of sustainable manufacturing policies would enable the minimisation of the environmental burden of sustainable electronics manufacturing processes. However, it is almost unrealistic to incorporate all the identified policies as it involves considerable effort, cost and time. The higher level management may not acknowledge the allocation of supplementary man-hours towards the incorporation of sustainable strategies. Sustainable manufacturing measures including environment, economic and social dimensions of sustainability must be identified from the viewpoint of electronics manufacturing. Sustainable manufacturing strategies based on electronics manufacturing process needs to be developed. Modelling, evaluation and deployment of sustainable strategies for electronics manufacturing need to be studied.

Process selection enables the practitioners to understand current process characteristics and opens up the prospectus of the possible improvement areas. There exists a need for the studies indicating practical relevance towards improvement. Development of a unique model to evaluate process could be crucial in the sustainable development of electronics products. The practitioners must seek to evaluate their process level using a logical model.

Devising a structured theory for the deployment of sustainability in manufacturing electronics products

The accomplishment of sustainable electronics manufacturing could be a result of the ability to organise a complex regulatory process that integrates and deploy multiple variations of three orientations. The mutual understanding among diverse experts about sustainable electronics as a practice allows the personnel to develop and plan more efficient and steady processes collectively. The structured theory could make the detection of variations much easier and enable the practitioners to take action. The concept affects workplace culture and thus facilitates advancement. The developments can be instituted correctly through training and steady structures for continual improvement which reverberates through the clear and concrete exhibition by the administration that everyone is accountable for improvement.

Improving the application of sustainability in manufacturing electronics products

It is demonstrated by many practical case studies that sustainable manufacturing creates value to the customers and stakeholders by instigating improvements along product, process and material orientations. Sustainability as a manufacturing strategy is an effective way of product synthesis which is also important among all available advanced manufacturing philosophies. And sustainable manufacturing strategy, which focuses on economy, society and environment, is an emerging area in electronics which has to be focused upon more in the years to come.

Initiatives must be taken to integrate electronics manufacturing with sustainability to ensure the practitioners are taking improvements along product, process and material orientations. Concerning prior research studies accomplished by various researchers, it is evident that the sustainable electronics product design and manufacturing approach is conducive towards achieving improvements across three pillars of sustainability. Combining sustainability strategies with electronics manufacturing would serve as a dominant platform to minimise environmental waste and improve societal and economic aspects also. An effective integration would enable competitive industry practice by minimising environmental impacts (You et al. Citation 2016 ). It would involve the workforce to categorise and implement sustainability improvement authoritarian measures. Design and manufacturing strategies with sustainability insights stress upon improving business effectiveness and reduce emissions, energy consumption and other associated impacts.

The current study presents an idea of modelling sustainable system of electronics and provides an overview of ways to overcome the challenges systematically through a conceptual framework by sustainability modelling and improvements across product, process and material orientations. The performance assessment enables practitioners to take feedback over the trial and provides avenue for improvement.

The deployment of sustainable manufacturing practices for design of electronic products is evidently surfacing within the industry. The study by Khan et al. ( Citation 2017 ) indicated that per capita income, manufacturing and service share to GDP are affected by CO 2 and GHG emissions. Thus, sustainable manufacturing is an important concept in the modern manufacturing scenario. It involves threefold benefit across the economy, environment and societal dimensions. A total of 57 papers are being reviewed. The review carried out from four perspectives such as product design, material selection, process improvement and modelling indicated the gap in sustainable manufacturing of electronics research and the potential research avenues of sustainable manufacturing of electronics. The conventional trial and error method for material selection may not be appropriate in the current situation since it involves higher cost and time. Therefore, it is essential to choose the right technique. It is understood from the literature that there remains a necessity for the development of an inclusive assessment model of process selection in the context of electronics production process to highlight ecological responsiveness, individual well-being and energy preservation. Sustainability modelling in electronics manufacturing is vital as implementing sustainable manufacturing concept is a significant initiative through which the effectiveness of triple bottom line can be evaluated. The qualitative method is appropriate for the computation of composite sustainability index. It can be concluded from the analysis of tools that LCA is a significant and diversified tool used in electronics product development and has been applied for conception, component and process designs, and assessment.

QFD has been extensively used as a design tool. Eco concern QFD variants such as QFDE and ECQFD have been applied in different case studies, and fuzzy logic has been integrated with QFD to tackle ambiguity in case information.

Based on the review, a framework for the sustainable development of electronic products has been developed. The proposed framework would enable manufacturers to design sustainable electronics products. The proposed framework would support the practitioners to systematically analyse the influential factors and apply appropriate techniques in priority order for facilitating sustainable performance improvement. Insights for practitioners are also presented.

Practical implications

The study supports electronics component manufacturing organisations that are in the primary stages of applying sustainable manufacturing concepts by providing essential understanding and ensure them a well ordered performance drive. The attempt would minimise the ambiguity of the managers about the credibility of such tools and direct them to choose the suitable ones. The productivity achieved using these tools demonstrate their practicality in the applications. The selection of a suitable tool is vital to attain the best result.

Future research directions

The insights achieved based on different perspectives are not decisive as the research expands. Further significant outcomes are projected to transpire that lead to diverse future research directions. The significant points to take out from this work for practice are as follows: Metrics for evaluating the impact of sustainable manufacturing of electronic products is affluent. The foremost indicators must be utilised to lead the future work. The noteworthy activity of sustainable manufacturing of electronics components must be documented by industry practitioners or academicians. Practitioners must gain from the use of this literature.

The practical review approach is valuable but challenging. Classification of studies based on orientations was difficult due to the ambiguous study designs or effect measures. The stumpy number of studies explicit to a definite setting, inadequate data, and inconsistency in expressions, tools and techniques used, made it tough to categorise the finest aspects of sustainable manufacturing.

Sustainable manufacturing improvement strategies that produce holistic benefits across its three pillars – people, planet and profit – have been rarely studied for its applications in electronics industries. Sustainable manufacturing lacks a structured practice approach. Guidelines and standard operating procedures could be prepared to help practitioners. Exclusive tools/techniques of sustainable manufacturing could be extended for ensuring applications in the electronics industries. To ensure the benefits of sustainable manufacturing application to electronics industries, performance indicators could be identified. Also, an inclusive sustainable manufacturing model needs to be developed.

Acknowledgments

This publication is an outcome of the R&D work undertaken project under the Visvesvaraya PhD Scheme of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India, being implemented by Digital India Corporation.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Kj manjunatheshwara.

K. J. Manjunatheshwara completed his PhD from Production Engineering Department of National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli, India. He received his Masters in Industrial Engineering from Production Engineering Department, National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu. His area of research interest is sustainable manufacturing.

S. Vinodh is an Associate Professor in Production Engineering Department of National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli, India. He completed his PhD from PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore, India. He was a gold medalist in his undergraduate and post graduate studies. He has been awarded Highly Commended Paper award and Outstanding Paper Award by Emerald publishers, UK, for the year 2009 and 2011. He has published over 100 papers in international journals and in proceedings of the leading national and international conferences. His research interests include agile, lean and sustainable systems and multi-criteria decision making.

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New substrate material for flexible electronics could help combat e-waste

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Electronic waste, or e-waste, is a rapidly growing global problem, and it’s expected to worsen with the production of new kinds of flexible electronics for robotics, wearable devices, health monitors, and other new applications, including single-use devices.

A new kind of flexible substrate material developed at MIT, the University of Utah, and Meta has the potential to enable not only the recycling of materials and components at the end of a device’s useful life, but also the scalable manufacture of more complex multilayered circuits than existing substrates provide.

The development of this new material is described this week in the journal RSC: Applied Polymers , in a paper by MIT Professor Thomas J. Wallin, University of Utah Professor Chen Wang, and seven others.

“We recognize that electronic waste is an ongoing global crisis that’s only going to get worse as we continue to build more devices for the internet of things, and as the rest of the world develops,” says Wallin, an assistant professor in MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering. To date, much academic research on this front has aimed at developing alternatives to conventional substrates for flexible electronics, which primarily use a polymer called Kapton, a trade name for polyimide.

Most such research has focused on entirely different polymer materials, but “that really ignores the commercial side of it, as to why people chose the materials they did to begin with,” Wallin says. Kapton has many advantages, including excellent thermal and insulating properties and ready availability of source materials.

The polyimide business is projected to be a $4 billion global market by 2030. “It’s everywhere, in every electronic device basically,” including parts such as the flexible cables that interconnect different components inside your cellphone or laptop, Wang explains. It’s also widely used in aerospace applications because of its high heat tolerance. “It’s a classic material, but it has not been updated for three or four decades,” he says.

However, it’s also virtually impossible to melt or dissolve Kapton, so it can’t be reprocessed. The same properties also make it harder to manufacture the circuits into advanced architectures, such as multilayered electronics. The traditional way of making Kapton involves heating the material to anywhere from 200 to 300 degrees Celsius. “It’s a rather slow process. It takes hours,” Wang says.

The alternative material that the team developed, which is itself a form of polyimide and therefore should be easily compatible with existing manufacturing infrastructure, is a light-cured polymer similar to those now used by dentists to create tough, durable fillings that cure in a few seconds with ultraviolet light. Not only is this method of hardening the material comparatively fast, it can operate at room temperature.

The new material could serve as the substrate for multilayered circuits, which provides a way of greatly increasing the number of components that can be packed into a small form factor. Previously, since the Kapton substrate doesn’t melt easily, the layers had to be glued together, which adds steps and costs to the process. The fact that the new material can be processed at low-temperature while also hardening very quickly on demand could open up possibilities for new multilayer devices, Wang says.

As for recyclability, the team introduced subunits into the polymer backbone that can be rapidly dissolved away by an alcohol and catalyst solution. Then, precious metals used in the circuits, as well as entire microchips, can be recovered from the solution and reused for new devices.

“We designed the polymer with ester groups in the backbone,” unlike traditional Kapton, Wang explains. These ester groups can be easily broken apart by a fairly mild solution that removes the substrate while leaving the rest of the device unharmed. Wang notes that the University of Utah team has co-founded a company to commercialize the technology. 

“We break the polymer back into its original small molecules. Then we can collect the expensive electronic components and reuse them,” Wallin adds. “We all know about the supply chain shortage with chips and some materials. The rare earth minerals that are in those components are highly valuable. And so we think that there’s a huge economic incentive now, as well as an environmental one, to make these processes for the recapture of these components.”

The research team included Caleb Reese and Grant Musgrave at the University of Utah, and Jenn Wong, Wenyang Pan, John Uehlin, Mason Zadan and Omar Awartani at Meta’s Reality Labs in Redmond, Washington. The work was supported by a startup fund at the Price College of Engineering at the University of Utah.

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Electronics Research Paper Topics

This list of electronics research paper topics provides the list of 30 potential topics for research papers and an overview article on the history of electronics.

1. Applications of Superconductivity

The 1986 Applied Superconductivity Conference proclaimed, ‘‘Applied superconductivity has come of age.’’ The claim reflected only 25 years of development, but was justifiable due to significant worldwide interest and investment. For example, the 1976 annual budget for superconducting systems exceeded $30 million in the U.S., with similar efforts in Europe and Japan. By 1986 the technology had matured impressively into applications for the energy industry, the military, transportation, high-energy physics, electronics, and medicine. The announcement of high-temperature superconductivity just two months later brought about a new round of dramatic developments.

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Get 10% off with 24start discount code, 2. discovery of superconductivity.

As the twenty-first century began, an array of superconducting applications in high-speed electronics, medical imaging, levitated transportation, and electric power systems are either having, or will soon have, an impact on the daily life of millions. Surprisingly, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the discovery of superconductivity was completely unanticipated and unimagined.

In 1911, three years after liquefying helium, H. Kammerlingh Onnes of the University of Leiden discovered superconductivity while investigating the temperature-dependent resistance of metals below 4.2Kelvin. Later reporting on experiments conducted in 1911, he described the disappearance of the resistance of mercury, stating, ‘‘Within some hundredths of a degree came a sudden fall, not foreseen [by existing theories of resistance]. Mercury has passed into a new state, which . . . may be called the superconductive state.’’

3. Electric Motors

The main types of electric motors that drove twentieth century technology were developed toward the end of the nineteenth century, with direct current (DC) motors being introduced before alternating current (AC) ones. Most important initially was the ‘‘series’’ DC motor, used in electric trolleys and trains from the 1880s onward. The series motor exerts maximum torque on starting and then accelerates to its full running speed, the ideal characteristic for traction work. Where speed control independent of the load is required in such applications as crane and lift drives, the ‘‘shunt’’ DC motor is more suitable.

4. Electronic Calculators

The electronic calculator is usually inexpensive and pocket-sized, using solar cells for its power and having a gray liquid crystal display (LCD) to show the numbers. Depending on the sophistication, the calculator might simply perform the basic mathematical functions (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) or might include scientific functions (square, log, trig). For a slightly higher cost, the calculator will probably include programmable scientific and business functions. At the end of the twentieth century, the electronic calculator was as commonplace as a screwdriver and helped people deal with all types of mathematics on an everyday basis. Its birth and growth were early steps on the road to today’s world of computing.

5. Electronic Communications

The broad use of digital electronic message communications in most societies by the end of the 20th century can be attributed to a myriad of reasons. Diffusion was incremental and evolutionary. Digital communication technology was seeded by large-scale funding for military projects that broke technological ground, however social needs and use drove systems in unexpected ways and made it popular because these needs were embraced. Key technological developments happened long before diffusion into society, and it was only after popularity of the personal computer that global and widespread use became commonplace. The Internet was an important medium in this regard, however the popular uses of it were well established long before its success. Collaborative developments with open, mutually agreed standards were key factors in broader diffusion of the low-level transmission of digital data, and provided resistance to technological lock-in by any commercial player. By the twenty-first century, the concept of interpersonal electronic messaging was accepted as normal and taken for granted by millions around the world, where infrastructural and political freedoms permitted. As a result, traditional lines of information control and mass broadcasting were challenged, although it remains to be seen what, if any, long-term impact this will have on society.

6. Electronic Control Technology

The advancement of electrical engineering in the twentieth century made a fundamental change in control technology. New electronic devices including vacuum tubes (valves) and transistors were used to replace electromechanical elements in conventional controllers and to develop new types of controllers. In these practices, engineers discovered basic principles of control theory that could be further applied to design electronic control systems.

7. Fax Machine

Fax technology was especially useful for international commercial communication, which was traditionally the realm of the Telex machine, which only relayed Western alpha-numeric content. A fax machine could transmit a page of information regardless of what information it contained, and this led to rapid and widespread adoption in developing Asian countries during the 1980s. With the proliferation of the Internet and electronic e-mail in the last decade of the twentieth century, fax technology became less used for correspondence. At the close of the 20th century, the fax machine was still widely used internationally for the transmission of documents of all forms, with the ‘‘hard copy’’ aspect giving many a sense of permanence that other electronic communication lacked.

8. Hall Effect Devices

The ‘‘Hall effect,’’ discovered in 1879 by American physicist Edwin H. Hall, is the electrical potential produced when a magnetic field is perpendicular to a conductor or semiconductor that is carrying current. This potential is a product of the buildup of charges in that conductor. The magnetic field makes a transverse force on the charge carriers, resulting in the charge being moved to one of the sides of the conductor. Between the sides of the conductor, measurable voltage is yielded from the interaction and balancing of the polarized charge and the magnetic influence.

Hall effect devices are commonly used as magnetic field sensors, or alternatively if a known magnetic field is applied, the sensor can be used to measure the current in a conductor, without actually plugging into it (‘‘contactless potentiometers’’). Hall sensors can also be used as magnetically controlled switches, and as a contactless method of detecting rotation and position, sensing ferrous objects.

9. Infrared Detectors

Infrared detectors rely on the change of a physical characteristic to sense illumination by infrared radiation (i.e., radiation having a wavelength longer than that of visible light). The origins of such detectors lie in the nineteenth century, although their development, variety and applications exploded during the twentieth century. William Herschel (c. 1800) employed a thermometer to detect this ‘‘radiant heat’’; Macedonio Melloni, (c. 1850) invented the ‘‘thermochrose’’ to display spatial differences of irradiation as color patterns on a temperature-sensitive surface; and in 1882 William Abney found that photographic film could be sensitized to respond to wavelengths beyond the red end of the spectrum. Most infrared detectors, however, convert infrared radiation into an electrical signal via a variety of physical effects. Here, too, 19th century innovations continued in use well into the 21st century.

10. Integrated Circuits Design and Use

Integrated circuits (ICs) are electronic devices designed to integrate a large number of microscopic electronic components, normally connected by wires in circuits, within the same substrate material. According to the American engineer Jack S. Kilby, they are the realization of the so-called ‘‘monolithic idea’’: building an entire circuit out of silicon or germanium. ICs are made out of these materials because of their properties as semiconductors— materials that have a degree of electrical conductivity between that of a conductor such as metal and that of an insulator (having almost no conductivity at low temperatures). A piece of silicon containing one circuit is called a die or chip. Thus, ICs are known also as microchips. Advances in semiconductor technology in the 1960s (the miniaturization revolution) meant that the number of transistors on a single chip doubled every two years, and led to lowered microprocessor costs and the introduction of consumer products such as handheld calculators.

11. Integrated Circuits Fabrication

The fabrication of integrated circuits (ICs) is a complicated process that consists primarily of the transfer of a circuit design onto a piece of silicon (the silicon wafer). Using a photolithographic technique, the areas of the silicon wafer to be imprinted with electric circuitry are covered with glass plates (photomasks), irradiated with ultraviolet light, and treated with chemicals in order to shape a circuit’s pattern. On the whole, IC manufacture consists of four main stages:

• Preparation of a design
• Preparation of photomasks and silicon wafers
• Testing and packaging

Preparing an IC design consists of drafting the circuit’s electronic functions within the silicon board. This process has radically changed over the years due to the increasing complexity of design and the number of electronic components contained within the same IC. For example, in 1971, the Intel 4004 microprocessor was designed by just three engineers, while in the 1990s the Intel Pentium was designed by a team of 100 engineers. Moreover, the early designs were produced with traditional drafting techniques, while from the late 1970s onward the introduction of computer-aided design (CAD) techniques completely changed the design stage. Computers are used to check the design and simulate the operations of perspective ICs in order to optimize their performance. Thus, the IC drafted design can be modified up to 400 times before going into production.

12. Josephson Junction Devices

One of the most important implications of quantum physics is the existence of so-called tunneling phenomena in which elementary particles are able to cross an energy barrier on subatomic scales that it would not be possible for them to traverse were they subject to the laws of classical mechanics. In 1973 the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Brian Josephson, Ivan Giaever and Leo Esaki for their work in this field. Josephson’s contribution consisted of a number of important theoretical predictions made while a doctoral student at Cambridge University. His work was confirmed experimentally within a year of its publication in 1961, and practical applications were commercialized within ten years.

13. Laser Applications

Lasers are employed in virtually every sector of the modern world including industry, commerce, transportation, medicine, education, science, and in many consumer devices such as CD players and laser printers. The intensity of lasers makes them ideal cutting tools since their highly focused beam cuts more accurately than machined instruments and leaves surrounding materials unaffected. Surgeons, for example, have employed carbon dioxide or argon lasers in soft tissue surgery since the early 1970s. These lasers produce infrared wavelengths of energy that are absorbed by water. Water in tissues is rapidly heated and vaporized, resulting in disintegration of the tissue. Visible wavelengths (argon ion laser) coagulate tissue. Far-ultraviolet wavelengths (higher photon energy, as produced by excimer lasers) break down molecular bonds in target tissue and ‘‘ablate’’ tissue without heating. Excimer lasers have been used in corneal surgery since 1984. Short pulses only affect the surface area of interest and not deeper tissues. The extremely small size of the beam, coupled with optical fibers, enables today’s surgeons to conduct surgery deep inside the human body often without a single cut on the exterior. Blue lasers, developed in 1994 by Shuji Nakamura of Nichia Chemical Industries of Japan, promise even more precision than the dominant red lasers currently used and will further revolutionize surgical cutting techniques.

14. Laser Theory and Operation

Lasers (an acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) provide intense, focused beams of light whose unique properties enable them to be employed in a wide range of applications in the modern world. The key idea underlying lasers originated with Albert Einstein who published a paper in 1916 on Planck’s distribution law, within which he described what happens when additional energy is introduced into an atom. Atoms have a heavy and positively charged nucleus surrounded by groups of extremely light and negatively charged electrons. Electrons orbit the atom in a series of ‘‘fixed’’ levels based upon the degree of electromagnetic attraction between each single electron and the nucleus. Various orbital levels also represent different energy levels. Normally electrons remain as close to the nucleus as their energy level permits, with the consequence that an atom’s overall energy level is minimized. Einstein realized that when energy is introduced to an atom; for example, through an atomic collision or through electrical stimulation, one or more electrons become excited and move to a higher energy level. This condition exists temporarily before the electron returns to its former energy level. When this decay phenomenon occurs, a photon of light is emitted. Einstein understood that since the energy transitions within the atom are always identical, the energy and the wavelength of the stimulated photon of light are also predictable; that is, a specific type of transition within an atom will yield a photon of light of a specific wavelength. Hendrick Kramers and Werner Heisenberg obtained a series of more extensive calculations of the effects of these stimulated emissions over the next decade. The first empirical evidence supporting these theoretical calculations occurred between 1926 and 1930 in a series of experiments involving electrical discharges in neon.

15. Lasers in Optoelectronics

Optoelectronics, the field combining optics and electronics, is dependent on semiconductor (diode) lasers for its existence. Mass use of semiconductor lasers has emerged with the advent of CD and DVD technologies, but it is the telecommunications sector that has primarily driven the development of lasers for optoelectronic systems. Lasers are used to transmit voice, data, or video signals down fiber-optic cables.

While the success of lasers within telecommunication systems seems unquestioned thanks to their utility in long-distance large-capacity, point-to-point links, these lasers also find use in many other applications and are ubiquitous in the developed world. Their small physical size, low power operation, ease of modulation (via simple input current variation) and small beam size mean that these lasers are now part of our everyday world, from CDs and DVDs, to supermarket checkouts and cosmetic medicine.

16. Light Emitting Diodes

Light emitting diodes, or LEDs, are semiconductor devices that emit monochromatic light once an electric current passes through it. The color of light emitted from LEDs depends not on the color of the bulb, but on the emission’s wavelength. Typically made of inorganic materials like gallium or silicon, LEDs have found frequent use as ‘‘pilot,’’ or indicator, lights for electronic devices. Unlike incandescent light bulbs, which generate light from ‘‘heat glow,’’ LEDs create light more efficiently and are generally more durable than traditional light sources.

17. Lighting Techniques

In 1900 electric lighting in the home was a rarity. Carbon filament incandescent lamps had been around for 20 years, but few households had electricity. Arc lamps were used in streets and large buildings such as railway stations. Domestic lighting was by candle, oil and gas.

The stages of the lightning techniques evolution are the following:

• Non-Electric Lighting
• Electric Lighting: Filament Lamps
• Electric Lighting: Discharge Lamps
• Electric Lighting: Fluorescent Lamps
• Electric Lighting: LED Lamps

18. Mechanical and Electromechanical Calculators

The widespread use of calculating devices in the twentieth century is intimately linked to the rise of large corporations and to the increasing role of mathematical calculation in science and engineering. In the business setting, calculators were used to efficiently process financial information. In science and engineering, calculators speeded up routine calculations. The manufacture and sale of calculators was a widespread industry, with major firms in most industrialized nations. However, the manufacture of mechanical calculators declined very rapidly in the 1970s with the introduction of electronic calculators, and firms either diversified into other product lines or went out of business. By the end of the twentieth century, slide rules, adding machines, and other mechanical calculators were no longer being manufactured.

19. Mobile (Cell) Telephones

In the last two decades of the twentieth century, mobile or cell phones developed from a minority communication tool, characterized by its prevalence in the 1980s among young professionals, to a pervasive cultural object. In many developed countries, more than three quarters of the population owned a cell phone by the end of the 20th century.

Cell phone technology is a highly evolved form of the personal radio systems used by truck drivers (citizens band, or CB, radio) and police forces in which receiver/transmitter units communicate with one another or a base antenna. Such systems work adequately over short distances with a low volume of traffic but cannot be expanded to cope with mass communication due to the limited space (bandwidth) available in the electromagnetic spectrum. Transmitting and receiving on one frequency, they allow for talking or listening but not both simultaneously.

For mobile radio systems to make the step up to effective telephony, a large number of two-way conversations needed to be accommodated, requiring a duplex channel (two separate frequencies, taking up double the bandwidth). In order to establish national mobile phone networks without limiting capacity or the range of travel of handsets, a number of technological improvements had to occur.

20. Photocopiers

The photocopier, copier, or copying machine, as it is variously known, is a staple of modern life. Copies by the billions are produced not only in the office but also on machines available to the public in libraries, copy shops, stationery stores, supermarkets, and a wide variety of other commercial facilities. Modern xerographic copiers, produced by a number of manufacturers, are available as desktop models suitable for the home as well as the small office. Many modern copiers reproduce in color as well as black and white, and office models can rival printing presses in speed of operation.

21. Photosensitive Detectors

Sensing radiation from ultraviolet to optical wavelengths and beyond is an important part of many devices. Whether analyzing the emission of radiation, chemical solutions, detecting lidar signals, fiber-optic communication systems, or imaging of medical ionizing radiation, detectors are the final link in any optoelectronic experiment or process.

Detectors fall into two groups: thermal detectors (where radiation is absorbed and the resulting temperature change is used to generate an electrical output) and photon (quantum) detectors. The operation of photon detectors is based on the photoelectric effect, in which the radiation is absorbed within a metal or semiconductor by direct interaction with electrons, which are excited to a higher energy level. Under the effect of an electric field these carriers move and produce a measurable electric current. The photon detectors show a selective wavelength-dependent response per unit incident radiation power.

22. Public and Private Lighting

At the turn of the 20th century, lighting was in a state of flux. In technical terms, a number of emerging lighting technologies jostled for economic dominance. In social terms, changing standards of illumination began to transform cities, the workplace, and the home. In design terms, the study of illumination as a science, as an engineering profession, and as an applied art was becoming firmly established. In the last decades of the 20th century, the technological and social choices in lighting attained considerable stability both technically and socially. Newer forms of compact fluorescent lighting, despite their greater efficiency, have not significantly replaced incandescent bulbs in homes owing to higher initial cost. Low-pressure sodium lamps, on the other hand, have been adopted increasingly for street and architectural lighting owing to lower replacement and maintenance costs. As with fluorescent lighting in the 1950s, recent lighting technologies have found niche markets rather than displacing incandescents, which have now been the dominant lighting system for well over a century.

23. Quantum Electronic Devices

Quantum theory, developed during the 1920s to explain the behavior of atoms and the absorption and emission of light, is thought to apply to every kind of physical system, from individual elementary particles to macroscopic systems such as lasers. In lasers, stimulated transitions between discrete or quantized energy levels is a quantum electronic phenomena (discussed in the entry Lasers, Theory and Operation). Stimulated transitions are also the central phenomena in atomic clocks. Semiconductor devices such as the transistor also rely on the arrangement of quantum energy levels into a valence band and a conduction band separated by an energy gap, but advanced quantum semiconductor devices were not possible until advances in fabrication techniques such as molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) developed in the 1960s made it possible to grow extremely pure single crystal semiconductor structures one atomic layer at a time.

In most electronic devices and integrated circuits, quantum phenomena such as quantum tunneling and electron diffraction—where electrons behave not as particles but as waves—are of no significance, since the device is much larger than the wavelength of the electron (around 100 nanometers, where one nanometer is 109 meters or about 4 atoms wide). Since the early 1980s however, researchers have been aware that as the overall device size of field effect transistors decreased, small-scale quantum mechanical effects between components, plus the limitations of materials and fabrication techniques, would sooner or later inhibit further reduction in the size of conventional semiconductor transistors. Thus to produce devices on ever-smaller integrated circuits (down to 25 nanometers in length), conventional microelectronic devices would have to be replaced with new device concepts that take advantage of the quantum mechanical effects that dominate on the nanometer scale, rather than function in despite of them. Such solid state ‘‘nanoelectronics’’ offers the potential for increased speed and density of information processing, but mass fabrication on this small scale presented formidable challenges at the end of the 20th century.

24. Quartz Clocks and Watches

The wristwatch and the domestic clock were completely reinvented with all-new electronic components beginning about 1960. In the new electronic timepieces, a tiny sliver of vibrating quartz in an electrical circuit provides the time base and replaces the traditional mechanical oscillator, the swinging pendulum in the clock or the balance wheel in the watch. Instead of an unwinding spring or a falling weight, batteries power these quartz clocks and watches, and integrated circuits substitute for intricate mechanical gear trains.

25. Radio-Frequency Electronics

Radio was originally conceived as a means for interpersonal communications, either person-toperson, or person-to-people, using analog waveforms containing either Morse code or actual sound. The use of radio frequencies (RF) designed to carry digital data in the form of binary code rather than voice and to replace physical wired connections between devices began in the 1970s, but the technology was not commercialized until the 1990s through digital cellular phone networks known as personal communications services (PCS) and an emerging group of wireless data network technologies just reaching commercial viability. The first of these is a so-called wireless personal area network (WPAN) technology known as Bluetooth. There are also two wireless local area networks (WLANs), generally grouped under the name Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity): (1) Wi-Fi, also known by its Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) designation 802.11b, and (2) Wi-Fi5 (802.11a).

26. Rectifiers

Rectifiers are electronic devices that are used to control the flow of current. They do this by having conducting and nonconducting states that depend on the polarity of the applied voltage. A major function in electronics is the conversion from alternating current (AC) to direct current (DC) where the output is only one-half (either positive or negative) of the input. Rectifiers that are currently, or have been, in use include: point-contact diodes, plate rectifiers, thermionic diodes, and semiconductor diodes. There are various ways in which rectifiers may be classified in terms of the signals they encounter; this contribution will consider two extremes—high frequency and heavy current—that make significantly different demands on device design.

27. Strobe Flashes

Scarcely a dozen years after photography was announced to the world in 1839, William Henry Fox Talbot produced the first known flash photograph. Talbot, the new art’s co-inventor, fastened a printed paper onto a disk, set it spinning as fast as possible, and then discharged a spark to expose a glass plate negative. The words on the paper could be read on the photograph. Talbot believed that the potential for combining electric sparks and photography was unlimited. In 1852, he pronounced, ‘‘It is in our power to obtain the pictures of all moving objects, no matter in how rapid motion they may be, provided we have the means of sufficiently illuminating them with a sudden electric flash.’’

The electronic stroboscope fulfills Talbot’s prediction. It is a repeating, short-duration light source used primarily for visual observation and photography of high-speed phenomena. The intensity of the light emitted from strobes also makes them useful as signal lights on communication towers, airport runways, emergency vehicles, and more. Though ‘‘stroboscope’’ actually refers to a repeating flash and ‘‘electronic flash’’ denotes a single burst, both types are commonly called ‘‘strobes.’’

28. Transistors

Early experiments in transistor technology were based on the analogy between the semiconductor and the vacuum tube: the ability to both amplify and effectively switch an electrical signal on or off (rectification). By 1940, Russell Ohl at Bell Telephone Laboratories, among others, had found that impure silicon had both positive (ptype material with holes) and negative (n-type) regions. When a junction is created between n-type material and p-type material, electrons on the ntype side are attracted across the junction to fill holes in the other layer. In this way, the n-type semiconductor becomes positively charged and the p-type becomes negatively charged. Holes move in the opposite direction, thus reinforcing the voltage built up at the junction. The key point is that current flows from one side to the other when a positive voltage is applied to the layers (‘‘forward biased’’).

29. Travelling Wave Tubes

One of the most important devices for the amplification of radio-frequency (RF) signals— which range in frequency from 3 kilohertz to 300 gigahertz—is the traveling wave tube (TWT). When matched with its power supply unit, or electronic power conditioner (EPC), the combination is known as a traveling wave tube amplifier (TWTA). The amplification of RF signals is important in many aspects of science and technology, since the ability to increase the strength of a very low-power input signal is fundamental to all types of long-range communications, radar and electronic warfare.

30. Vacuum Tubes/Valves

The vacuum tube has its roots in the late nineteenth century when Thomas A. Edison conducted experiments with electric bulbs in 1883. Edison’s light bulbs consisted of a conducting filament mounted in a glass bulb. Passing electricity through the filament caused it to heat up and radiate light. A vacuum in the tube prevented the filament from burning up. Edison noted that electric current would flow from the bulb filament to a positively charged metal plate inside the tube. This phenomenon, the one-way flow of current, was called the Edison Effect. Edison himself could not explain the filament’s behavior. He felt this effect was interesting but unimportant and patented it as a matter of course. It was only fifteen years later that Joseph John Thomson, a physics professor at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge in the U.K., discovered the electron and understood the significance of what was occurring in the tube. He identified the filament rays as a stream of particles, now called electrons. In a range of papers from 1901 to 1916, O.W. Richardson explained the electron behavior. Today the Edison Effect is known as thermionic emission.

History of Electronics

Few of the basic tasks that electronic technologies perform, such as communication, computation, amplification, or automatic control, are unique to electronics. Most were anticipated by the designers of mechanical or electromechanical technologies in earlier years. What distinguishes electronic communication, computation, and control is often linked to the instantaneous action of the devices, the delicacy of their actions compared to mechanical systems, their high reliability, or their tiny size.

The electronics systems introduced between the late nineteenth century and the end of the twentieth century can be roughly divided into the applications related to communications (including telegraphy, telephony, broadcasting, and remote detection) and the more recently developed fields involving digital information and computation. In recent years these two fields have tended to converge, but it is still useful to consider them separately for a discussion of their history.

The origins of electronics as distinguished from other electrical technologies can be traced to 1880 and the work of Thomas Edison. While investigating the phenomenon of the blackening of the inside surface of electric light bulbs, Edison built an experimental bulb that included a third, unused wire in addition to the two wires supporting the filament. When the lamp was operating, Edison detected a flow of electricity from the filament to the third wire, through the evacuated space in the bulb. He was unable to explain the phenomenon, and although he thought it would be useful in telegraphy, he failed to commercialize it. It went unexplained for about 20 years, until the advent of wireless telegraphic transmission by radio waves. John Ambrose Fleming, an experimenter in radio, not only explained the Edison effect but used it to detect radio waves. Fleming’s ‘‘valve’’ as he called it, acted like a one-way valve for electric waves, and could be used in a circuit to convert radio waves to electric pulses so that that incoming Morse code signals could be heard through a sounder or earphone.

As in the case of the Fleming valve, many early electronic devices were used first in the field of communications, mainly to enhance existing forms of technology. Initially, for example, telephony (1870s) and radio (1890s) were accomplished using ordinary electrical and electromechanical circuits, but eventually both were transformed through the use of electronic devices. Many inventors in the late nineteenth century sought a functional telephone ‘‘relay’’; that is, something to refresh a degraded telephone signal to allow long distance telephony. Several people simultaneously recognized the possibility of developing a relay based on the Fleming valve. The American inventor Lee de Forest was one of the first to announce an electronic amplifier using a modified Fleming valve, which he called the Audion. While he initially saw it as a detector and amplifier of radio waves, its successful commercialization occurred first in the telephone industry. The sound quality and long-distance capability of telephony was enhanced and extended after the introduction of the first electronic amplifier circuits in 1907. In the U.S., where vast geographic distances separated the population, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) introduced improved vacuum tube amplifiers in 1913, which were later used to establish the first coast-to-coast telephone service in 1915 (an overland distance of nearly 5000 kilometers).

These vacuum tubes soon saw many other uses, such as a public-address systems constructed as early as 1920, and radio transmitters and receivers. The convergence of telephony and radio in the form of voice broadcasting was technically possible before the advent of electronics, but its application was greatly enhanced through the use of electronics both in the radio transmitter and in the receiver.

World War I saw the applications of electronics diversify somewhat to include military applications. Mostly, these were modifications of existing telegraph, telephone, and radio systems, but applications such as ground-to-air radio telephony were novel. The pressing need for large numbers of electronic components, especially vacuum tubes suitable for military use, stimulated changes in their design and manufacture and contributed to improving quality and falling prices. After the war, the expanded capacity of the vacuum tube industry contributed to a boom in low-cost consumer radio receivers. Yet because of the withdrawal of the military stimulus and the onset of the Great Depression, the pace of change slowed in the 1930s. One notable exception was in the field of television. Radio broadcasting became such a phenomenal commercial success that engineers and businessmen were envisioning how ‘‘pictures with sound’’ would replace ordinary broadcasting, even in the early 1930s. Germany, Great Britain, and the U.S. all had rudimentary television systems in place by 1939, although World War II would bring nearly a complete halt to these early TV broadcasts.

World War II saw another period of rapid change, this one much more dramatic than that of World War I. Not only were radio communications systems again greatly improved, but for the first time the field of electronics engineering came to encompass much more than communication. While it was the atomic bomb that is most commonly cited as the major technological outcome of World War II, radar should probably be called the weapon that won the war. To describe radar as a weapon is somewhat inaccurate, but there is no doubt that it had profound effects upon the way that naval, aerial, and ground combat was conducted. Using radio waves as a sort of searchlight, radar could act as an artificial eye capable of seeing through clouds or fog, over the horizon, or in the dark. Furthermore, it substituted for existing methods of calculating the distance and speed of targets. Radar’s success hinged on the development of new electronic components, particularly new kinds of vacuum tubes such as the klystron and magnetron, which were oriented toward the generation of microwaves. Subsidized by military agencies on both sides of the Atlantic (as well as Japan) during World War II, radar sets were eventually installed in aircraft and ships, used in ground stations, and even built into artillery shells. The remarkable engineering effort that was launched to make radar systems smaller, more energy efficient, and more reliable would mark the beginning of an international research program in electronics miniaturization that continues today. Radar technology also had many unexpected applications elsewhere, such as the use of microwave beams as a substitute for long-distance telephone cables. Microwave communication is also used extensively today for satellite-to-earth communication.

The second major outcome of electronics research during World War II was the effort to build an electronic computer. Mechanical adders and calculators were widely used in science, business, and government by the early twentieth century, and had reached an advanced state of design. Yet the problems peculiar to wartime, especially the rapid calculation of mountains of ballistics data, drove engineers to look for ways to speed up the machines. At the same time, some sought a calculator that could be reprogrammed as computational needs changed. While computers played a role in the war, it was not until the postwar period that they came into their own. In addition, computer research during World War II contributed little to the development of vacuum tubes, although in later years computer research would drive certain areas of semiconductor electron device research.

While the forces of the free market are not to be discounted, the role of the military in electronics development during World War II was of paramount importance. More-or-less continuous military support for research in electronic devices and systems persisted during the second half of the twentieth century too, and many more new technologies emerged from this effort. The sustained effort to develop more compact, rugged devices such as those demanded by military systems would converge with computer development during the 1950s, especially after the invention of the transistor in late 1947.

The transistor was not a product of the war, and in fact its development started in the 1930s and was delayed by the war effort. A transistor is simply a very small substitute for a vacuum tube, but beyond that it is an almost entirely new sort of device. At the time of its invention, its energy efficiency, reliability, and diminutive size suggested new possibilities for electronic systems. The most famous of these possibilities was related to computers and systems derived from or related to computers, such as robotics or industrial automation. The impetus for the transistor was a desire within the telephone industry to create an energy-efficient, reliable substitute for the vacuum tube. Once introduced, the military pressed hard to accelerate its development, as the need emerged for improved electronic navigational devices for aircraft and missiles.

There were many unanticipated results of the substitution of transistors for vacuum tubes. Because they were so energy efficient, transistors made it much more practical to design battery powered systems. The small transistor radio (known in some countries simply as ‘‘the transistor’’), introduced in the 1950s, is credited with helping to popularize rock and roll music. It is also worth noting that many developing countries could not easily provide broadcasting services until the diffusion of battery operated transistor receivers because of the lack of central station electric power. The use of the transistor also allowed designers to enhance existing automotive radios and tape players, contributing eventually to a greatly expanded culture of in-car listening. There were other important outcomes as well; transistor manufacture provided access to the global electronics market for Asian radio manufacturers, who improved manufacturing methods to undercut their U.S. competitors during the 1950s and 1960s. Further, the transistor’s high reliability nearly eliminated the profession of television and radio repair, which had supported tens of thousands of technicians in the U.S. alone before about 1980.

However, for all its remarkable features, the transistor also had its limitations; while it was an essential part of nearly every cutting-edge technology of the postwar period, it was easily outperformed by the older technology of vacuum tubes in some areas. The high-power microwave transmitting devices in communications satellites and spacecraft, for example, nearly all relied on special vacuum tubes through the end of the twentieth century, because of the physical limitations of semiconductor devices. For the most part, however, the transistor made the vacuum tube obsolete by about 1960.

The attention paid to the transistor in the 1950s and 1960s made the phrase ‘‘solid-state’’ familiar to the general public, and the new device spawned many new companies. However, its overall impact pales in comparison to its successor—the integrated circuit. Integrated circuits emerged in the late 1950s, were immediately adopted by the military for small computer and communications systems, and were then used in civilian computers and related applications from the 1960s. Integrated circuits consist of multiple transistors fabricated simultaneously from layers of semiconductor and other materials. The transistors, interconnecting ‘‘wires,’’ and many of the necessary circuit elements such as capacitors and resistors are fabricated on the ‘‘chip.’’ Such a circuit eliminates much of the laborious process of assembling an electronic system such as a computer by hand, and results in a much smaller product. The ability to miniaturize components through integrated circuit fabrication techniques would lead to circuits so vanishingly small that it became difficult to connect them to the systems of which they were a part. The plastic housings or ‘‘packages’’ containing today’s microprocessor chips measure just a few centimeters on a side, and yet the actual circuits inside are much smaller. Some of the most complex chips made today contain many millions of transistors, plus millions more solid-state resistors and other passive components.

While used extensively in military and aerospace applications, the integrated circuit became famous as a component in computer systems. The logic and memory circuits of digital computers, which have been the focus of much research, consist mainly of switching devices. Computers were first constructed in the 1930s with electromechanical relays as switching devices, then with vacuum tubes, transistors, and finally integrated circuits. Most early computers used off-the-shelf tubes and transistors, but with the advent of the integrated circuit, designers began to call for components designed especially for computers. It was clear to engineers at the time that all the circuits necessary to build a computer could be placed on one chip (or a small set of chips), and in fact, the desire to create a ‘‘computer on a chip’’ led to the microprocessor, introduced around 1970. The commercial impetus underlying later generations of computer chip design was not simply miniaturization (although there are important exceptions) or energy efficiency, but also the speed of operation, reliability, and lower cost. However, the inherent energy efficiency and small size of the resulting systems did enable the construction of smaller computers, and the incorporation of programmable controllers (special purpose computers) into a wide variety of other technologies. The recent merging of the computer (or computer-like systems) with so many other technologies makes it difficult to summarize the current status of digital electronic systems. As the twentieth century drew to a close, computer chips were widely in use in communications and entertainment devices, in industrial robots, in automobiles, in household appliances, in telephone calling cards, in traffic signals, and in a myriad other places. The rapid evolution of the computer during the last 50 years of the twentieth century was reflected by the near-meaninglessness of its name, which no longer adequately described its functions.

From an engineering perspective, not only did electronics begin to inhabit, in an almost symbiotic fashion, other technological systems after about 1950, but these electronics systems were increasingly dominated by the use of semiconductor technology. After virtually supplanting the vacuum tube in the 1950s, the semiconductor-based transistor became the technology of choice for most subsequent electronics development projects. Yet semiconducting alloys and compounds proved remarkably versatile in applications at first unrelated to transistors and chips. The laser, for example, was originally operated in a large vacuum chamber and depended on ionized gas for its operation. By the 1960s, laser research was focused on the remarkable ability of certain semiconducting materials to accomplish the same task as the ion chamber version. Today semiconductor devices are used not only as the basis of amplifiers and switches, but also for sensing light, heat, and pressure, for emitting light (as in lasers or video displays), for generating electricity (as in solar cells), and even for mechanical motion (as in micromechanical systems or MEMS).

However, semiconductor devices in ‘‘discrete’’ forms such as transistors, would probably not have had the remarkable impact of the integrated circuit. By the 1970s, when the manufacturing techniques for integrated circuits allowed high volume production, low cost, tiny size, relatively small energy needs, and enormous complexity; electronics entered a new phase of its history, having a chief characteristic of allowing electronic systems to be retrofitted into existing technologies. Low-cost microprocessors, for example, which were available from the late 1970s onward, were used to sense data from their environment, measure it, and use it to control various technological systems from coffee machines to video tape recorders. Even the human body is increasingly invaded by electronics; at the end of the twentieth century, several researchers announced the first microchips for implantation directly in the body. They were to be used to store information for retrieval by external sensors or to help deliver subcutaneous drugs. The integrated circuit has thus become part of innumerable technological and biological systems.

It is this remarkable flexibility of application that enabled designers of electronic systems to make electronics the defining technology of the late twentieth century, eclipsing both the mechanical technologies associated with the industrial revolution and the electrical and information technologies of the so-called second industrial revolution. While many in the post-World War II era once referred to an ‘‘atomic age,’’ it was in fact an era in which daily life was increasingly dominated by electronics.

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Chemical Society Reviews

Bioelectronics for electrical stimulation: materials, devices and biomedical applications.

* Corresponding authors

a Department of Biomedical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

b Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China E-mail: [email protected]

Bioelectronics is a hot research topic, yet an important tool, as it facilitates the creation of advanced medical devices that interact with biological systems to effectively diagnose, monitor and treat a broad spectrum of health conditions. Electrical stimulation (ES) is a pivotal technique in bioelectronics, offering a precise, non-pharmacological means to modulate and control biological processes across molecular, cellular, tissue, and organ levels. This method holds the potential to restore or enhance physiological functions compromised by diseases or injuries by integrating sophisticated electrical signals, device interfaces, and designs tailored to specific biological mechanisms. This review explains the mechanisms by which ES influences cellular behaviors, introduces the essential stimulation principles, discusses the performance requirements for optimal ES systems, and highlights the representative applications. From this review, we can realize the potential of ES based bioelectronics in therapy, regenerative medicine and rehabilitation engineering technologies, ranging from tissue engineering to neurological technologies, and the modulation of cardiovascular and cognitive functions. This review underscores the versatility of ES in various biomedical contexts and emphasizes the need to adapt to complex biological and clinical landscapes it addresses.

• This article is part of the themed collection: 2024 Emerging Investigators

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Y. Huang, K. Yao, Q. Zhang, X. Huang, Z. Chen, Y. Zhou and X. Yu, Chem. Soc. Rev. , 2024, Advance Article , DOI: 10.1039/D4CS00413B

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Enhancing supply chain resilience through market research.

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Amaan Kazi is the CEO of Verified Market Research , a global market research & consulting firm focused on niche & emerging markets.

Before making a significant purchase, we often research extensively in the hopes of avoiding disappointment. Similarly, businesses can engage in thorough market research to enhance their supply chain resilience.

Let's delve into how various industries can fortify their supply chains through innovative strategies and market research.

The Role Of Market Research In Modern Supply Chains

Despite being the backbone of commerce and industry, the supply chain's complex nature also makes it vulnerable to disruptions—from natural disasters and geopolitical tensions to pandemics and cyber attacks.

Market research provides a detailed understanding of market conditions, including potential risks and emerging trends. This knowledge can help businesses anticipate disruptions, adapt to changing circumstances and implement strategies that enhance the resilience and efficiency of their supply chains.

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From my experience leading a global market research and consulting firm, here is how I see five supply-chain-dependent industries using market research to tackle challenges and implement innovative solutions.

1. Automotive And Transportation

The automotive industry continues to face supply chain disruptions due to geopolitical tensions, semiconductor shortages and the shift toward electric vehicles (EVs). Ways to help mitigate include:

• Digital twins: Digital twins create virtual replicas of supply chains, enabling companies to simulate scenarios and optimize operations, thus identifying bottlenecks and improving efficiency.

• Flexible supply chains: Flexible supply chain models let automotive companies dynamically adjust production and inventory levels, swiftly responding to market changes and minimizing disruptions.

These strategies allow for real-time adjustments and predictive analysis, which I see as especially critical for the highly volatile automotive sector.

2. Electronics And Semiconductors

The electronics and semiconductor industries are also grappling with supply chain complexities due to rapid technological advancements and global demand surges. Some innovative solutions for this sector include:

• AI and robotics: AI-driven forecasting and robotic automation streamline production, enhance accuracy, improve worker safety and facilitate efficient inventory management and order fulfillment.

• Cybersecurity: As supply chains become more digitized, cybersecurity measures become crucial to protecting against cyber threats and ensuring the integrity of digital assets.

Pro-Tip: Start with small-scale pilot projects, gradually scaling up your investments in AI software and robotics while ensuring robust cybersecurity protocols.

3. Pharmaceuticals

The pharmaceutical industry is heavily regulated, with stringent requirements for product quality and traceability. The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted the vulnerability of global supply chains to sudden disruptions; however, it also highlighted some innovative solutions for the future of pharmaceuticals.

• Blockchain for traceability: Blockchain technology ensures the authenticity and traceability of pharmaceutical products, combating counterfeit drugs and improving transparency. Traceability tracks the origin and movement of products, while visibility provides an overall view of the supply chain's current status.

• AI and predictive analytics: AI-driven predictive analytics helps enhance demand forecasting and inventory management, ensuring that critical drugs are available when needed without overstocking. While similar in aims to AI and robotics, predictive analytics focuses on forecasting and optimizing inventory, whereas robotics automates physical tasks, which in turn improves efficiency and accuracy.

4. Food And Beverages

The food and beverage sector faces numerous challenges (download required), including climate change, fluctuating consumer demands and logistical disruptions. There are a couple of potential solutions for those in this industry to employ.

• Digital agriculture: IoT and AI in agriculture enable precision farming, optimizing resource use and increasing yields by providing real-time data on soil health, weather and crop growth. Start by deploying IoT sensors for real-time data collection and invest in AI platforms to analyze the data for actionable insights.

• Supply chain visibility: Those in fast-moving consumer goods can use visibility tools to track products from farm to shelf, ensuring quality, reducing waste and providing a comprehensive understanding of the supply chain.

Retailers also face supply chain challenges due to shifts in consumer demand, logistical disruptions and the need for rapid replenishment cycles. Some ways to use market research to strengthen supply chains for retail include:

• Omni-channel logistics: Many retailers are integrating omnichannel logistics to help create a more seamless shopping experience, improve inventory management and meet customer expectations. I recommend you begin by integrating online and offline inventory systems, ensuring consistent data flow and training staff for new methods of operation.

• Data-driven decision making: By leveraging big data and analytics, retailers can better predict consumer demand, optimize inventory levels and streamline supply chain operations .

When employing data-driven decision making, make sure to focus on predicting consumer trends, optimizing stock levels and enhancing customer satisfaction.

How Research Can Lead To A Strong Supply Chain Network

Last year, one of my clients (a major automotive component manufacturer) sought my firm's expertise to strengthen its supply chain network across the Middle East and Asia Pacific markets.

Our research highlighted potential risks and opportunities, identifying reliable suppliers, optimal logistics routes and key market trends. Armed with this information, the client was better able to forge partnerships with local suppliers, streamline their logistics operations and implement robust risk management practices.

This allowed the manufacturer to establish a supply chain network that could both meet the demands of their production schedules and adapt swiftly to market changes. I believe this type of success story underscores the pivotal role of market research in enhancing supply chain resilience and securing a competitive advantage.

Steps To Building A Resilient Supply Chain

No matter your industry, to help build a resilient supply chain, consider the following steps before seeking external market research assistance.

1. Conduct geopolitical, environmental and market risk assessments.

2. Leverage technology to monitor and optimize supply chain operations.

3. Integrate software for end-to-end supply chain visibility and transparency.

4. Foster strategic partnerships to strengthen supply chain networks.

5. Adopt environmentally and operationally sustainable practices.

6. Stay informed of developments, be agile and be ready to adapt.

Just as an architect meticulously plans and assesses every aspect of a building before construction, businesses can apply the same rigor to fortify their supply chains. Market research is the blueprint that can provide critical insights toward a robust and resilient supply chain framework.

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• Yann-Wen Lan

Strain engineering of vertical molybdenum ditelluride phase-change memristors

Memristors based on electric-field-induced phase transitions between a semiconducting and conductive phase of molybdenum ditelluride can be improved by using stressed metal contacts to strain the material closer to the phase switching point.

• Ahmad Azizimanesh
• Stephen M. Wu

Mobility overestimation in molybdenum disulfide transistors due to invasive voltage probes

Reply to: Mobility overestimation in molybdenum disulfide transistors due to invasive voltage probes

• Hong Kuan Ng

A conformable phased-array ultrasound patch for bladder volume monitoring

An ultrasound patch that is based on multiple phased arrays of rare-earth-doped ceramic piezoelectric transducers on a stretchable substrate can be conformably attached to the surface of the body for a large field of view and operator-independent imaging of deep organs.

• Colin Marcus
• Canan Dagdeviren

A large-scale integrated vector–matrix multiplication processor based on monolayer molybdenum disulfide memories

An in-memory computing chip for vector–matrix multiplication and discrete signal processing applications can be fabricated using floating-gate field-effect transistors based on monolayer molybdenum disulfide.

• Guilherme Migliato Marega
• Hyun Goo Ji

Computational event-driven vision sensors for in-sensor spiking neural networks

A spiking neural network that is based on event-driven vision sensors can be created using two parallel photodiodes of opposite polarities that output programmable spike signal trains in response to changes in light intensity.

CMOS-compatible Ising and Potts annealing using single-photon avalanche diodes

Ising- and Potts-model-based simulated annealing can be performed with photon-detector-based neuron circuits and used to solve a range of optimization problems.

• William Whitehead
• Zachary Nelson
• Luke Theogarajan

Programmable graded doping for reconfigurable molybdenum ditelluride devices

An effective-gate-voltage-programmed graded-doping method can be used to reconfigure a single-gate molybdenum ditelluride device to different states, including a polarity-switchable diode, memory, Boolean logic and artificial synapse.

• Ruixuan Peng
• Yonghuang Wu

Electrostatic actuators with constant force at low power loss using matched dielectrics

A model that predicts the force behaviour for solid/liquid-dielectric multilayer stacks independent of actuator design, and solely based on the material properties, can be used to develop actuators that provide a steady force output under constant-voltage operation.

• Ion-Dan Sîrbu
• David Preninger
• Martin Kaltenbrunner

Two-dimensional semiconductor integrated circuits operating at gigahertz frequencies

Five-stage ring oscillators that operate at frequencies of up to 2.65 GHz can be created using monolayer molybdenum disulfide field-effect transistors developed with a design-technology co-optimization process.

• Weisheng Li
• Xinran Wang

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