Lead has been a major concern of environmentalists lately – many efforts have been put into getting rid of it in the development of electronics, and it’s certainly quite a problem. The metal pollutes the soil, as well as ground water tables, and this is due to the disposal of electronics in landfills. Not to mention that it’s a toxic substance in e-waste dumps.

At the University of Maryland, a new possible solution is brewing – a material replacement for lead, which can be used in transducers, actuators, sensors and various other electronic components. Researchers have been experimenting with bismuth ferrite as a replacement for lead in pizoelectric charging in devices. And researchers from Yale have invented a new material for soldering, which could eliminate the need for lead in this area of electronics, by using magnets instead of heat to bind materials together.

This is a great advancement in the way technology developers work, and if the trend continues, we may see a lot more environmentally-friendly devices being produced in the near future – and we certainly hope so.

[ Via Treehugger ]

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