Conducting Graphene Synthesis from Electronic Waste

• Published in: ACS sustainable chemistry & engineering Vol. 9; no. 42; pp. 14090 - 14100
• Main Authors: Bajpai, Anurag, Kumbhakar, Partha, Tiwary, Chandra Sekhar, Biswas, Krishanu
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Chemical Society 25.10.2021
• Subjects: crystal structure; electronic wastes; electronics; graphene; green chemistry; pollution; polymers; Raman spectroscopy; e-waste; cryomilling; pulsed laser ablation; printed circuit boards; graphene
• ISSN: 2168-0485; 2168-0485
• DOI: 10.1021/acssuschemeng.1c03817

“Waste-to-wealth” is always a subject of significant interest due to several aspects, including effective utilization of a large amount of e-waste by recycling valuable materials and thereby protecting the environment from pollution. Here, we have demonstrated a green, easily scalable, and sustainable method of synthesizing graphene from one of the major components of e-waste, that is, the polymeric component, using pulsed laser ablation. The proposed synthesis route showed great promise in synthesizing high-quality graphene. XPS shows that the sp2 hybrid state is the predominant chemical state of carbon in graphene. TEM and AFM investigations highlight that graphene has ≤4 layers with a high degree of crystallinity. The relationship between the graphene structure and laser parameters is established using Raman spectroscopy. Systematic modeling provides the optimum laser parameters (laser fluence of 20 J/cm2 with an ablation time of 600 s) for good-quality graphene and the maximum obtained yield of 40.2%. The high-quality synthesized graphene has further been utilized for highly conductive electronics contacts, useful for future robust electronics applications.