Consumer electronic devices, such as smart phones, laptops, computers and media players are evolving in terms of functionality and material composition. A compressed and linear product life cycle means that these devices, which often contain rare earth, critical and precious elements, move through the economy and the environment at faster rates. This study comprises a detailed and comprehensive analysis of the elemental composition of 10 devices, and study of how the composition changes over time for a specific device, smart phones. The devices were disassembled, sorted into different components and their printed circuit boards were size reduced. Selected components were digested with newly developed microwave assisted acid digestion method (MWAD), to ensure full recovery from the different components. Inductively Coupled Plasma-Optical Emission Spectroscopy was utilized to detect and quantify 64 elements. Across all devices, 14 rare earth elements, six platinum group metals, 20 critical metals, and 16 other elements, including some precious metals, were detected. Individual devices could include a wide range of elements: 48 metals were quantified in the computer hard drives, for example. The dynamic nature of elemental composition was also captured for a single device. With this data, we conducted a cradle-to-gate analysis of the environmental impacts of the critical elements in consumer electronics.

Extracting and quantifying rare earth, critical and precious elements in consumer electronics

ACS Fall 2021

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