Synthesis of glass fiber-nano silicon carbide composite by using waste printed circuit boards and compact discs as resources

Abstract The rapid advances in technology, urbanisation and decrease in life span of electronic equipment have accelerated the generation of electronic waste significantly. Electronic waste is considered as serious social problem and environmental threat and hence sustainable methodology is critically required to recycle e-waste. In this paper, a novel approach to synthesise glass fiber-silicon carbide (SiC) composite by using waste printed circuit boards (PCBs) and compact discs (CDs) as resources is reported. The synthesis is based on carbothermal reduction using non-metallic PCB residue as glass fiber source, waste CD char as carbon source and silicon dioxide as silicon source. SEM, XRD, Raman and FTIR results confirm the formation of glass fiber-SiC composite and XRD signifies the major phases of β-SiC. SiC particles were mainly composed of sphere shaped nanoparticles and glass fiber sizes were in the range of 200–500 um length. This innovative approach of using electronic waste as resources could be an alternative for synthesis of glass fiber-SiC composite and also reduces the dependency on traditional raw materials.