• Energy Research

The transition towards sustainable and circular practices is crucial for optimizing resource use and reducing environmental impacts. Digital Product Passports (DPPs) as innovative tools play a key role in collecting and storing data throughout product lifecycles, enhancing sustainability and circularity in value chains. They improve transparency, enable data sharing among stakeholders, and encourage eco-friendly choices. Previous research has not focused on the factors impacting the implementation and adoption of DPPs. This systematic literature review of 53 articles analyzes the barriers and enablers in DPP adoption and implementation using the Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) framework. The results show that digital technologies and legislative frameworks act as key enablers, while reluctance to share information among partners, complex data management and lack of standardization are major barriers. The paper also provides recommendations for companies and policymakers to promote the adoption of DPPs and facilitate the transition to the sustainable future.

AbstractSustainability in electronics has a growing importance due to, e.g. increasing electronic waste, and global and European sustainability goals. Printing technologies and use of paper as a substrate enable manufacturing of sustainable electronic devices for emerging applications, such as the multi-layer anti-counterfeit label presented in this paper. This device consisted of electrochromic display (ECD) element, NFC (near field communication) tag and circuitry, all fully roll-to-roll (R2R) printed and assembled on plastic-free paper substrate, thus leading to a sustainable and recyclable device. Our setup uses harvested energy from HF field of a smartphone or reader, to switch an electrochromic display after rectification to prove authenticity of a product. Our novelty is in upscaling the manufacturing process to be fully printable and R2R processable in high-throughput conditions simulating industrial environment, i.e. in pilot scale. The printing workflow consisted of 11 R2R printed layers, all done in sufficient quality and registration. The printed antennas showed sheet resistance values of 32.9±1.9 mΩ/sq. The final yield was almost 1500 fully printed devices, and in R2R assembly over 1400 labels were integrated with 96.5% yield. All the assembled tags were readable with mobile phone NFC reader. The optical contrast (ΔE*) measured for the ECDs was over 15 for all the printed displays, a progressive switching time with a colour change visible in less than 5 s. The smart tag is ITO-free, plastic-free, fully printed in R2R and has a good stability over 50 cycles and reversible colour change from light to dark blue.

This paper investigates the suitability of a holistic and streamlined sustainability assessment tool for benchmarking electronic devices and batteries in a design stage to select the most sustainable solutions to be implemented. The similarities and differences between three benchmarking cases are analysed to point out sustainability opportunities found in printed flexible electronic devices and sustainable batteries. The results are used to outline generic guidelines on how to introduce eco-design and circular economy to electronic products and batteries.

AbstractIn fuel cells the underlying reactions take place at the catalyst layers composed of materials favoring the desired electrochemical reactions. This paper introduces a formulation process for a catalyst inkjet ink used as an anode for a fully printed flexible fuel cell stack. The optimal ink formulation was 2.5 wt% of carbon–platinum–ruthenium mixture with 0.5% Nafion concentration in a diacetone alcohol solvent vehicle. The best jetting performance was achieved when 1 wt% binder was included in the ink formulation. Anodes with resistivity of approximately 0.1 Ω cm were inkjet printed, which is close to the commercial anode resistivity of 0.05 Ω cm. The anodes were used in fuel cell stacks that were prepared by utilizing only printing methods. The best five-cell-air-breathing stack showed an open circuit potential under H2/air conditions of 3.4 V. The peak power of this stack was 120µW cm−2at 1.75 V, with a resistance obtained from potentiostatic impedance analysis of 295 Ohm cm2. The printed electrodes showed a performance suitable for low-performance solutions, such as powering single-use sensors.

Abstract This paper provides an overview of the SUPERIOT project, an EU SNS JU (Smart Networks and Services Joint Undertaking) initiative focused on developing truly sustainable IoT systems. The SUPERIOT concept is based on a unique holistic approach to sustainability, proactively developing sustainable solutions considering the design, implementation, usage and disposal/reuse stages. The concept exploits radio and optical technologies to provide dual-mode wireless connectivity and dual-mode energy harvesting as well as dual-mode IoT node positioning. The implementation of the IoT nodes or devices will maximize the use of sustainable printed electronics technologies, including printed components, conductive inks and substrates. The paper describes the SUPERIOT concept, covering the key technical approaches to be used, promising scenarios and applications, project goals and demonstrators which will be developed to the proof-of-concept stage. In addition, the paper briefly discusses some important visions on how this technology may be further developed in the future.

AbstractReusable packaging has been used as a case study for development of durable and sustainable smart tags that can provide both identity management and potentially also condition monitoring capabilities. Four different smart tag technologies have been investigated, including laser engraved 2D bar codes, printed 2D bar codes with combined temperature indicator, printed NFC (Near‐Field Communication) tags and RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags as labels. All technologies showed excellent durability towards repeated washing and heating when protective layers were used. SWOT analysis was also carried out to weight the advantages and disadvantages of the different technologies summarizing the choice of the technology per use and end‐of‐life requirements. Sustainability of the investigated technologies is discussed from the smart tag recyclability perspective and the challenges that can be seen related to the use of electronic functionalities and/or plastic‐based protective layers.

Abstract The electronics industry is expected to adopt more sustainable and circular product concepts and operations. Since the electronics value chains are complex, digital product passports (DPPs) that provide value chain transparency and traceability can be seen as one key enabler for shifting towards circular economy. Data carriers that are physical identifiers attached to products provide access to product data stored in the cloud and databases. Smart tags that combine item-level identification with condition monitoring are proposed to enable access also to dynamic lifecycle data of products to improve decision-making at end-of-life based on conditions that the product has been exposed to during its lifecycle. This dynamic information could be effectively used together with product data to decide on which circular economy strategy to adopt: reuse, remanufacture, repair, recycle etc. This paper analyses the data requirements of electronics value chain for DPPs, specifically focusing on which conditions to monitor with the help of smart tags. The data for this analysis was collected from ten developmental value chains aiming for sustainability and circularity with a questionnaire related to data needs, data access, data gaps, and data availability. The responses highlighted the need for data exchange and tools to monitor performance of components during storage and use. A printed visual humidity sensor is developed and analyzed as an experimental case study to help the value chains to dynamically monitor lifecycle conditions of products. This smart tag principal was functional with a visible colour change over time at different humidities between 33–72%RH, while not reacting at 0%RH. The relevance of different smart tag concepts is discussed and other important aspects, such as sustainability and durability of the smart tags, are included in the discussion.

AbstractThis paper presents a sustainability benchmarking tool, the GreenTool, to compare different electronic product concepts, specifically printed ones, with each other from the sustainability perspective. The purpose is to increase awareness of different aspects of sustainability and support the design of more sustainable electronics. This tool is built on European and global sustainability regulations and recommendations, and it considers environmental, economic, and social sustainability aspects in seven different criteria, each with several sub-criteria that are the actual categories used in the comparison. The tool uses scientific and industrial information as input, as well as a technical understanding of the new and baseline concepts to be compared to properly support sustainability benchmarking. In this paper, we further present an example comparison of four smart label product concepts, one of which is the commercial baseline concept, and the other three are developmental concepts. The biggest differences among the product concepts were found in the categories of ‘raw materials’, ‘manufacturing’, and ‘logistics’ criteria, where the developmental concepts based on manufacturing by printing and bio-based materials gave environmental benefits over the baseline. In the other criteria, the differences were smaller, but the developmental concepts also provided slight improvements in sustainability. The GreenTool can be considered suitable for qualitative sustainability comparisons in product concept design.