High added-value materials recovery using electronic scrap-transforming waste to valuable products

Due to the rapid development in electronic industries and high consumer demand, electrical and electronic equipment have a shorter lifetime in developed and developing countries markets, leading to tons of electronic waste. The waste Printed circuit board (PCBs) contain many valuable metals like gold and copper and hazardous materials like lead. Therefore, recycling the metallic and non-metallic fractions from waste PCBs using environmentally friendly and suitable sustainable resource utilization techniques is in high demand. In this direction, nanotechnology has also been recently used to recover base metals, toxic metals, and precious metals in different sizes and morphologies. This study provides an up-to-date review of research on recovering high added value (HAV) materials from various electronic waste components. These include high purity metals, nanoparticles, nanostructured alloys, nanocomposites, high purity ultrafine particles, and microfibers. It also includes the properties investigated and the potential applications of the obtained HAV products in fields such as wastewater treatment, detection of incessant pollutants, biomedicine, and catalysis. Current challenges faced in scaling up the e-waste derived nanoproducts manufacturing are also discussed in the concluding remarks.