A utilização de resíduos industriais na produção de materiais pode mitigar os impactos gerados pelo agente gerador. A utilização na costrução civil de materiais gerados a partir de resíduos, minimizaria também os impactos gerados pela extração de recursos naturais para este setor. Os resíduos industriais utilizados nesta pesquisa são classificados como resíduos perigosos e, sendo a pesquisa sustentada na hipótese de que é possível produzir um material cerâmico para utilização na construção civil a partir de lodo de indústria de placa de circuito impresso, lama vermelha do processamento de bauxita e escória siderúrgica, foram produzidas composições cerâmicas utilizando estes resíduos como matéria prima. Os corpos de prova (CPs) foram confeccionados com 20g em molde de 20x60 mm e com prensa uniaxial de 5 MPa. Os CPs foram sinterizados à temperaturas de 800, 900, 1000, 1050, 1100 e 1150°C durante 6 horas. Foram realizadas análises de umidade, granulometria, densidade, perda ao fogo, FRX, DRX, MEV/EDS, retração linear de queima, absorção de água, resistência à flexão e lixiviação, a fim de caracterizar as matérias primas e o material cerâmico desenvolvido. Os resultados demonstram que houve fusão dos elementos que compõem as matérias primas. A composição que apresentou o melhor resultado alcançou 5,48 MPa de resistência à flexão, 4,57% de retração linear de queima, 2,06 de densidade e 19,94% de absorção de água. O resultado do ensaio de lixiviação aponta que o material cerâmico após a sinterização apresenta traços de Pb, tendo imobilizado apenas parte dos metais pesados analisados presentes na composição dos corpos de prova, o que o classifica como resíduo perigoso. Em comparação com as normas brasileiras, os aspectos de absorção de água e resistência atenderam aos requisitos para uso em blocos cerâmicos para alvenaria estrutural e nas categorias A, B e C de tijolos maciços comuns para alvenaria, respectivamente, no entanto, a imobilização de metais pesados carece de ajustes para que se alcance um material cerâmico inerte. / The use of industrial waste in the production of materials can mitigate the impacts generated by the generating agent. The use in civil construction of materials generated from waste, would also minimize the impacts generated by the extraction of natural resources for this sector. The industrial waste used in this research is classified as hazardous waste and the research is based on the hypothesis that it is possible to produce a ceramic material for use in civil construction from printed circuit board industry sludge, bauxite red processing sludge and steel slag, ceramic compositions using these residues as raw material were produced. The sample were made with 20g in mold 20x60 mm and with uniaxial press 5 MPa. The sample were sintered at temperatures of 800, 900, 1000, 1050, 1100 and 1150°C for 6 hours. Moisture tests were carried out, density, granulometry, loss on ignition, XRF, XRD, SEM/EDS, linear firing shrinkage, water absorption, flexural strength and leaching in order to characterize the materials and the ceramic material developed. The results show that there has been fusion of the components of the raw materials. The composition showed the best result achieved flexural strength 5.48 MPa, 4.57% of linear firing decrease, 2.06 density and 19.94% water absorption. The results of the leaching test indicate that the ceramic material after sintering presents traces of Pb, having immobilized only part of the analyzed heavy metals present in the composition of the test specimens, which classifies it as hazardous waste. In comparison with the Brazilian standards, the water absorption and resistance aspects met the requirements for use in ceramic blocks for structural masonry and in categories A, B and C of solid bricks common for masonry, respectively, however, the immobilization of metals is required to achieve an inert ceramic material.

The electronics industry is shifting its emphasis from reducing transistor size and operational frequency to increasing device integration, reducing form factor and increasing the interface of electronics with their surroundings. This new emphasis has created increased demands on the electronic package. To accomplish the goals to increase device integration and interfaces will undoubtedly require new materials with increased functionality both electrically and mechanically. This thesis focuses on developing new interconnect and printable conductive materials capable of providing power, ground and signal transmission with enhanced electrical performance and mechanical flexibility and robustness. More specifically, we develop: 1.) A new understanding of the conduction mechanism in electrically conductive composites (ECC). 2.) Develop highly conductive stretchable silicone ECC (S-ECC) via in-situ nanoparticle formation and sintering. 3.) Fabricate and test stretchable radio frequency devices based on S-ECC. 4.) Develop techniques and processes necessary to fabricate a stretchable package for stretchable electronic and radio frequency devices. In this thesis we provide convincing evidence that conduction in ECC occurs predominantly through secondary charge transport mechanism (tunneling, hopping). Furthermore, we develop a stretchable silicone-based ECC which, through the incorporation of a special additive, can form and sinter nanoparticles on the surface of the metallic conductive fillers. This sintering process decreases the contact resistance and enhances conductivity of the composite. The conductive composite developed has the best reported conductivity, stretchability and reliability. Using this S-ECC we fabricate a stretchable microstrip line with good performance up to 6 GHz and a stretchable antenna with good return loss and bandwidth. The work presented provides a foundation to create high performance stretchable electronic packages and radio frequency devices for curvilinear spaces. Future development of these technologies will enable the fabrication of ultra-low stress large area interconnects, reconfigurable antennas and other electronic and RF devices where the ability to flex and stretch provides additional functionality impossible using conventional rigid electronics.

The ever-increasing need for higher bandwidth and density is one of the motivations for extensive research on planar optoelectronic structures on printed circuit board (PCB) substrates. Among these applications, optical interconnects have received considerable attention in the last decade. Several optical interconnect techniques, such as free space, guided wave, board level and fiber array interconnects, have been introduced for system level applications. In all planar optoelectronic systems, optical waveguides are crucial elements that facilitate signal routing. Low propagation loss, high reliability and manufacturability are among the requirements of polymer optical waveguides and polymer passive devices on PCB substrates for practical applications. Besides fabrication requirements, reliable characterization tools are needed to accurately and nondestructively measure important guiding properties, such as waveguide propagation loss. In three-dimensional (3D) fully embedded board-level optical interconnects, another key challenge is to realize efficient optical coupling between in-plane waveguides and out-of-plane laser/detector devices. Driven by these motivations, the research presented in this thesis focuses on some fundamental studies of optical interconnects for PCB substrates, e.g., developing low-loss optical polymer waveguides with integrated efficient out-of-plane couplers for optical interconnects on printed circuit board substrates, as well as the demonstration of a novel free-space optical interconnect system by using a volume holographic thin film. Firstly, the theoretical and experimental investigations on the limitations of using mercury i-line ultraviolet (UV) proximity photolithography have been carried out, and the metallization techniques for fine copper line formation are explored. Then, a new type of low-loss polymer waveguides (i.e., capped waveguide) is demonstrated by using contact photolithography with considerable performance improvement over the conventional waveguides. To characterize the propagation properties of planar optical waveguides, a reliable, nondestructive, and real-time technique is presented based on accurately imaging the scattered light from the waveguide using a sensitive charge coupled device (CCD) camera that has a built-in integration functionality. To provide surface normal light coupling between waveguides and optoelectronic devices for optical interconnects, a simple method is presented here to integrate 45° total internal reflection micro-mirrors with polymer optical waveguides by an improved tilted beam photolithography (with the aid of de-ionized water) on PCBs. A new technique is developed for a thin layer of metal coating on the micro-mirrors to achieve higher reflection and coupling efficiency (i.e., above 90%). The combination of the capped waveguide technique and the improved tilted UV exposure technique along with a hard reusable metal mask for metal deposition eliminates the usage of the traditional lift-off process, greatly simplifies the process, and reduces fabrication cost without sacrificing the coating quality. For the study of free-space optical interconnects, a simple system is presented by employing a single thin-film polymeric volume holographic element. One 2-spherical-beam hologram is used to link each point light source with the corresponding photodetector. An 8-channel free-space optical interconnect system with high link efficiency is demonstrated by using a single volume holographic element where 8 holograms are recorded.

Most electromagnetic interference standards specify that measurements of radiated emissions must be performed in the far field (FF), e.g. at an open-area test site or in a semi-anechoic chamber. Since near field (NF) measurements are cheaper, quicker and more flexible compared to FF tests, establishing a correlation between NF and FF data is of great research interest. One strategy to achieve this goal is to find a set of basic radiators comprising electric and magnetic dipoles that generate the same NF as the original source at selected observation points. This set of dipoles, based on the uniqueness theorem, can then be used to predict the FF radiation patterns. The uniqueness theorem requires that electric or magnetic fields are matched on a closed surface with respect to the magnitude and phase. The focus of this thesis is the investigation of FF prediction based on NF magnitude-only data. In this thesis, a robust NF-FF conversion model based on Genetic Algorithms (GAs) is built up to predict the radiation of printed circuit boards (PCBs). This is done by introducing a dipole moment magnitude range pre-selection before the initialisation step of GAs, customising the processes of selection, crossover and mutation for anti-sticking and checking the correlation between NF and FF fitness values. Since the performance of GAs is tightly related to the number of dipoles in the GA model, FF characteristics of generic radiation sources (such as a long wire and a large loop) are analysed using both analytical calculation and source modelling by GAs. For structures with simple FF patterns, if more dipoles than necessary are used, the computational cost of GAs is unnecessarily high. On the other side, for structures with complicated FF patterns, the GA modelling may not be able to well approximate the FF radiation, due to the limitation for GAs to tackle too many unknowns. Therefore the scope of the model applicability is discussed, and a dipole number N, depending on the electrical size of the source, is recommended for GA modelling. By applying GAs to get the equivalent dipole set of a radiating PCB from the magnetic NF magnitudes, NF sampling approaches are investigated in detail, including where to locate NF sampling planes, what plane coverage angle to choose, how many points to observe, what type of data to collect, what dynamic range to allow for the data, and how many planes to choose. Two case studies are presented for predicting the FF radiation of PCBs from magnetic NF magnitude-only observations, and validate the NF sampling approaches in this thesis.

Thesis (M.S.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Department of Systems Science and Industrial Engineering, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 94-96).

Thesis (M. App. Sc.)--Carleton University, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 110-113). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (M.S.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Thomas J. Watson School of Engineering and Applied Science, Department of Systems Science and Industrial Engineering, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Thomas J. Watson School of Engineering and Applied Science, Department of Systems Science and Industrial Engineering, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references.

M. Tech. (Department of Metallurgical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Technology), Vaal University of Technology. / Dust generated during comminution of end of life printed circuit boards (PCB), typically having d80 of 212 μm, contains copper and gold up to 6.32 % and 635 g/ton, respectively. The dust particles being highly diverse in material makeup, an hydrometallurgical processing scheme able to selectively recover target values was studied. Use of mineral acids will result in multiple metal dissolution which will complicate subsequent solution treatments. Detailed characterization of the dust was first carried out, and leaching scheme were thereafter investigated to selectively recover gold and copper from the dust, in three leaching stages. Different conditions of ammonia and thiourea leaching were investigated to optimize agitation speed, reagents concentration, temperature and leaching time. The leaching kinetics of these elements from the dust under different prevailing leaching conditions were studied. Elemental composition of the dust size fractions indicates metal contents generally increase with decreasing dust particle size, down to – 53 μm size, which contains up to 635 g/ton Au, 25.43 % Fe, and 1.40 % Cu, compared to 51 g/ton Au, 3.07 % Fe and 6.32 % Cu in the 150–212 μm fraction. Thermodynamically, under oxidative ammonia leaching, zinc and copper ammine complex is feasible, yet zinc recovery is low. For 75 – 106 μm dust size, 2 M NH4OH, 17.5 M H2O2, 1 atm. pressure and 400 rpm in Parr reactor, Cu and Zn recoveries were 92 % and 50 %, while the activation energies evaluated within 283 – 313 K gave 47.39 kJ/mol and 33.12 kJ/mol. The kinetic analysis for copper leaching gave best correlation coefficient (R2) of 0.9804 when fitted into the chemical control model, and the rate constant was 4.4 x 10-3 at 313 K. The presence of base metals frustrates direct gold recovery from the dust using thiourea with sulphuric acid and hydrogen peroxide. Therefore, the residue obtained from the first stage copper leach was acid washed to remove iron and other residual base metal contents with 5 M H2SO4, at 333 K, 400 rpm for 2 hours. Recovery analysis shows that about 75-98 % Fe, 54-65 % Zn and 96-98 % Ni were recovered under this condition while Cu was less than 7 % at all PSDs; copper having been selectively removed at the first stage. Using 75 – 106 μm dust fraction, gold recovery was optimum when the acid wash residue was leached with 0.5 M thiourea (SC(NH2)2), 0.5 M sulphuric acid (H2SO4), 0.1 M hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) under 1 atm. pressure, 298 K and 400 rpm for 4 hours. The recovery was 98 % Au. Using this optimum for other size fractions, over 98 % gold was recovered from 150–212 μm, 106 – 150 μm and 75 – 106 μm dust while 71 % and 68 % Au were recovered from 53 – 75 μm and – 53 μm respectively. The lower recovery at the finest sizes can be due to the quantity of the gold contents deported in this particle size, which will require higher reagent dosage. The kinetic analysis gave best correlation coefficient (R2) of 0.99 when fitted to the chemical control leaching model. From this data, a process flowsheet was proposed to give separate streams rich in copper and gold values from the processed dust, with detailed processing parameters. This is considered a readily scalable process solution for retrieving gold and copper from PCB dust.

The demands of consumer electronic products to support multi-functionality such as computing, communication and multimedia applications with reduced form factor and low cost is the driving force behind packaging technologies such as System on Package (SOP). SOP aims to enhance the functionality of the package while providing form factor reduction by the integration of active and passive components. However, embedding components within mixed signal packages causes unwanted interferences across the digital and analog-radio frequency (RF) sections of the package, which is a major challenge yet to be addressed. This dissertation focused on the chip-last method of embedding chips within cavities in organic packages and addressed the challenges for preserving power integrity in such packages. The challenges associated with electromagnetic coupling in packages when chips are embedded within the substrate layers are identified, analyzed and demonstrated. The presence of the chip embedded within the package introduces new interaction mechanisms between the chip and package that have not been encountered in conventional packages with surface mounted chips. It is of significant importance to understand the chip-package interaction mechanisms, for ensuring satisfactory design of systems with embedded actives. The influence of the electromagnetic coupling from the package on the bulk substrate and bond-pads of the embedded chip are demonstrated. Solutions that remedy the noise coupling using Electromagnetic Band-Gap structures (EBGs) along with design methodologies for their efficient implementation in multilayer packages are proposed. This dissertation presents guidelines for designing efficient power distribution networks in multilayer packages with embedded chips.