Method retrieves and recycles nanowires

“There is a lot of interest in recycling electronic materials because we want to both reduce electronic waste and maximise the use we get out of rare or costly materials,” said Yuxuan Liu, first author of a paper on the work and a Ph.D. student at North Carolina State University (NC State). “We’ve demonstrated an approach that allows us to recycle nanowires, and that we think could be extended to other nanomaterials – including nanomaterials containing noble and rare-earth elements.”

“In our approach, a silver nanowire network is separated from the rest of the materials in a device,” said Yong Zhu, corresponding author of the paper and the Andrew A. Adams Distinguished Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at NC State. “That network is then disassembled into a collection of separate silver nanowires in solution. Those nanowires can then be used to create a new network and incorporated into a new sensor or other devices.”