European project cuts environmental impact of medical electronics by up to 65%

The SUSTRONICS project, a consortium of partners from 11 European countries, is developing methods to make electronics more sustainable across their entire life cycle. The work focuses on resource-efficient materials, printed electronics, energy-efficient manufacturing, and concepts for reuse, repair and recycling.

Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration IZM leads reliability testing and life-cycle assessments (LCAs) for medical and diagnostic demonstrators, including EEG devices, smart wound dressings and wearable sensors. Researchers analyze environmental impacts from raw-material extraction through manufacturing, use and end-of-life.

LCAs examining global warming potential, critical material use and toxicity identified electrodes as the dominant impact hotspot in glucose monitoring patches. Feeding these findings back to development partners enabled Onalabs to implement an optical sensor that reduced the patch's overall carbon footprint by around 65%.

Electrodes made from paper and copper paste produced signals comparable to the current gold standard while performing significantly better in all environmental-impact tests.

For smart wound dressings, replacing conventional PET substrates and silver conductive inks with alternatives such as Thinstar and carbon, plus using recycled materials, cut the environmental impact of the flexible electronic modules by up to 95%.

The project aims to embed sustainability as a fixed component of European electronics development. Methods and results are intended to be applied beyond the demonstrators, giving companies a systematic way to incorporate environmental considerations from the R&D phase onward.

Fraunhofer IZM scientist David Sánchez said the holistic approach can serve as a flagship for a sustainable circular economy involving industry, research and policy stakeholders.