In this month’s Periodic Graphics in C&EN, we’re looking at the chemistry behind the recent news stories of lithium-ion batteries in some…
Regular readers will spot that today’s post is a bit of a twist on an old post from the site’s archives, which looked at the elements present in a smartphone and the roles that they play. In this updated version, I wanted to highlight which elements in your smartphone will actually get recycled at the end of its lifetime – and which we could be doing a better job at salvaging and re-using!
There are an isolated few graphics online that look at elements involved in the manufacture of a smartphone – for example, this ‘Periodic Table of iPhones’ – but there’s remarkably little easily accessible information out there that details the specific compounds used for specific purposes in mobile phones. This probably isn’t surprising since these details are probably kept under the lock and key of patent laws and the like; however, I tried my best with this graphic to provide a little more detail about specific uses, an undertaking that took a lot more effort than I initially expected!