Electronic Waste

5Materials Used in Electronic Equipment and Manufacturing Perspectives*

Daniel D. München¹, Pablo Dias², and Hugo M. Veit¹

¹Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Post Graduation Program in Materials, Mine and Metallurgy Engineering (PPGE3M), Department of Materials, 9500, Av. Bento Gonçalves, Porto Alegre – RS, 91509-900, Brazil

²University of New South Wales, Faculty of Science and Engineering, School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering, 229 Anzac Parade, Kensington, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia

5.1 Introduction

It is common ground that the invention of the transistor in 1947 by John Bardeen, Walter H. Brattain, and William B. Shockley provided the breakthrough for electronic equipment. Transistors, which had become less expensive than previous technology (e.g. vacuum tubes), did not burn out in service, and were much smaller and more reliable, had allowed electronics to enter all fields of human life and to provide functionalities that were unimaginable a few years before. Transistors then evolved to integrated circuits (ICs) that were manufactured with about 10 individual components on a 3 mm² silicon chip. By 1970, the number of components was up to 1000 on a chip of the same size. In the following year, the first microprocessor was introduced, which contained all the arithmetic, logic, and control circuitry required to perform the functions of a computer’s central processing unit (CPU) (Scace 2016).

Then, by the mid-1980s, inexpensive microprocessors had ...