Published on 07/13/2009
Professor David Thiel and MadhusudanRao Neeli from Griffith University in Brisbane (Australia) have created electronics circuits made of plastic (versus silicon). Plastic circuits do not require as much toxic chemicals as their silicon counterparts and even the packaging (normally made of ceramic+epoxy) is greener.
Furthermore, once they have reached the end of their lifecycle, these plastic components can be recycled to build circuits again. We're not sure how many times they can be recycled, but this sounds pretty good. Don't expect your next CPU to be made of plastic anytime soon though. It's probably going to start with something much simpler.