Building a circular economy for flexible electronics: Design, fabrication, service, and recycling

With the ever-increasing number of flexible electronics being applied in various emerging fields, building a circular economy for the new generation of electronics to ensure positive financial and social impacts becomes important. Flexible electronics have different compositions and configurations from conventional rigid ones. Therefore, the corresponding circular economy approaches also vary accordingly. This review focuses on the development of initial product design and end-of-life product treatment. The evaluation criteria for the circular economy, flexible electronic life cycle, and common failure mechanism of the flexible devices are introduced to present fundamental information and an overall picture of the current situation. The developed product design and the advanced waste-treatment technologies are deeply discussed. Throughout the analysis of the progress of building a sustainable circular economy for flexible electronics, the expected future research directions, targeting technology, system, and social perspectives to achieve a well-organized and widely applicable zero-waste product chain, are proposed.