Authors: Thomas Roth Marion Wolf Manfred Pöhlein Rudi van Eldik
Publish Date: 2013/07/14
Volume: 405, Issue: 23, Pages: 7215-7229
Abstract
Thirtyone populated printed wiring boards covering a range of 30 years of construction and originating from various electronic devices were investigated using different analytical procedures Noble precious and rare metals as well as environmentally relevant elements were identified by EDXRF and lead and the flame retardant FR indicator bromine were localised by means of microbeam EDXRF A GC/MS procedure was developed to identify and quantify FR substances Several sample preparation techniques were applied optimised and compared The method of first choice was ultrasonic extraction because it provided the best compromise between effort cost and quality of the analytical results Altogether a wide variety of elements of concern and halogenated and phosphatebased FRs were found in the investigated boards Their occurrence is partially related to the origin and/or year of constructionThe elemental composition of the printed wiring boards was studied in Bachelor theses by Christian Koller 51 Christopher Kroner 52 and Hannes Bauernfeind 53 within the scope of state examinations for a German teaching degree Measurements for the determination of elemental distributions of PWB10 PWB11 and PWBs 13 to 17 were done by Abdel mnim Altwaiq within the context of his dissertation 61 The authors kindly thank Dr Achim Zahl for the NMR measurements
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