Smith, L. orcid.org/0000-0002-5480-4392, Ibn‐Mohammed, T., Koh, L. et al. (1 more author) (2019) Life cycle assessment of functional materials and devices : opportunities, challenges, and current and future trends. Journal of the American Ceramic Society, 102 (12). pp. 7037-7064. ISSN 0002-7820
Abstract
Functional ceramics such as piezoelectrics, thermoelectrics, magnetic materials, ionic conductors, and semiconductors are opening new frontiers that underpin numerous aspects of modern life. This widespread usage comes with a responsibility to understand what impact their mass production has on the environment. Life‐cycle assessment (LCA) is a tool employed for the identification of sustainable materials pathways through the consideration of environmental burdens of materials both during fabrication and as a final product. Although the LCA technique has been widely used for the evaluation of environmental impacts in numerous product supply chains, its application for environmental profiling of functional ceramics is now gaining attention. This paper presents a review of current developments in LCA, including existing and emerging applications with emphasis on the development and fabrication of functional materials and devices (FM&D). Selected published works on LCA of functional ceramics are discussed, highlighting the importance of adopting LCA at the design stage and/or at laboratory stage before expensive investments and resources are committed. Drawing from the extant literature, we show that the integration of environmental and sustainability principles into the overall process of FM&D manufacturing, in a way that anticipates foreseeable harmful consequences while identifying opportunities for improvement, can aid the timely communications of key findings to functional materials developers. This guides the orientation of research, development and deployment, and provides insights toward the prioritization of research activities while potentially averting unintended consequences. It is intended that the review presented will encourage the materials science community to engage with LCA to address important materials design, substitution, and optimization needs.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2019 The Authors. Journal of the American Ceramic Society published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of American Ceramic Society (ACERS). This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
Keywords: | life cycle assessment; functional materials; sustainability |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Engineering (Sheffield) > Department of Materials Science and Engineering (Sheffield) The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Management School (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC) EP/L017563/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 04 Oct 2019 14:38 |
Last Modified: | 04 Oct 2019 14:38 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1111/jace.16712 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:151474 |
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