Okay. My name is Jos and I’m working on research in circular economy and automotive sector. And I would like to know your point of view. If you accept, I’m going to record our conversation, transcribe it, and put to transcription with a pseudonym, not your real name, in a repository of text documents that will be used for the research. If you do this and you change your mind and no longer want to participate, get in touch with us and we will immediately remove your interview from the repository. I’m leaving you an information sheet with contact informations later, so if you agree, please tell me your name and that you agree.
I’m agreeing. I’m Lena Reinke.
Thank you. Lena. So the first question, can you tell me a bit about your educational and professional background and interests?
Yeah. So I did my diploma studies in chemistry in Germany at the University in Kaiserslautern. Afterwards, I also did my PhD studies in Kaiserslautern in the group of Stefan Koubek and like did research on gold nanoparticle synthesis and like functionalization of those gold nanoparticles. And afterwards, after my PhD studies, I moved over to Panacol, where I worked as an R&D chemist and developed adhesives for many applications automotive industry, consumer electronics, and so on. And now I moved from the R&D division at Panacol to our business development.
And what is your area of expertise?
I would say at the moment I am focusing on adhesives for organic photovoltaic applications as well as perovskite based ones. And yeah, we want to to develop adhesives that bring flexibility and adhesion so that the manufacturers of those solar solutions have a good raw material to bring up their stacks.
Yeah. The theme of this conference is The future of Electronics Reshaped. What does the idea of reshaping electronics for the future mean to you?
I think we will like yeah, we will leave those very rigid. Rigid. I would say PCB cardboards or something behind and go more and more to those flexible solutions as they are having less material. You can like save some some raw materials by making making things more flexible. And as from my side, as an R&D chemist, it’s also the adhesive itself that can be like replace some plastic foils or stuff. So you can bring everything together in one raw material, in one product. And this is really good, I would say.
And what do you think is the relationship between electronics and sustainability.
Between electronics and sustainability? Let me think about it shortly. Um. I hope that if we are bringing up all those flexible electronics, maybe we will also be able to bring this into several lifetime circles so that it’s not used once, so that we can maybe use it twice. And yeah, this could be an answer to your question.
Uh, can you define a circular economy in your own words?
Circular economy in my own words. Oh. Good question. Um. Oh. I would say circular economy for me is.
In German Kreislaufwirtschaft.
Yeah.
What does it mean? What is the definition.
Yeah. So that you have like materials that are built up. In our case it’s like always this polymerization stuff. And this is also one topic where we need to concentrate on to find a solution to delink those polymers again. And then you can have raw materials again that can be used in other products. So you can diversify. Yeah. You can diversify the raw material itself if you if you can like recycle it. Yeah.
Do you participate in a circular economy yourself in any aspect of your life?
I would say yes. As I’m living in Germany, I can deal with it every day. So if you go to the supermarket, you have to bring your your bottles back and then you get money back. So this is one of those. But this is also, I think, good because if you went to other countries there, you can see that there is a lot of plastic waste that is just laying around there. And yeah, I would say this is one. And also yeah, from my side I’m also like using electrical devices very long. And I also bought a cell phone few years ago which was like a second hand one. So these are my experiences that I.
Yeah. Do you think electronics can play a role in in making the car industry more sustainable?
Mm. I’m really not an expert in the car industry. I really can’t answer this question properly. This is maybe.