The rapid growth of waste printed circuit boards (PCBs) necessitates development of compatible treatment techniques. In this study, abrasive waterjet (AWJ) cutting technology was utilized to crush waste PCBs for the first time. Cutting experiments were mainly performed on waste mobile mainboard, random access memory (RAM), universal circuit board (UCB), and central processing unit (CPU). The results demonstrated that AWJ cutting was capable of breaking waste UCB (∼ 14 mm thick) into small particles (< 1 mm) in one-step processing, by which metals and nonmetals were well dissociated. SEM images of RAM and mainboard showed PCBs had a multi-layer structure, which would favor component dissociation under the mechanism of abrasive grinding. All the cutting debris of CPU (mainly Cu and Ti particles) were micro-sized (< 150 μm) and metals were completely dissociated. Mechanical property analysis showed tensile strengths of RAM, UCB, and CPU were 150.0, 72.3 and 74.4 Mpa, respectively, which were apparently lower than that of hard materials. This implied that AWJ cutting has a huge potential in enhancement of material-removal indicator through system improvement and process optimization. Thus, this study offers a promising environmental-friendly method for recovering metal resources from e-waste.

废印刷电路板（PCB）的快速增长需要开发兼容的处理技术。在这项研究中，首次使用磨料水射流（AWJ）切割技术粉碎废PCB。切割实验主要在废旧移动主板，随机存取存储器（RAM），通用电路板（UCB）和中央处理器（CPU）上进行。结果表明，AWJ切割能够通过一步处理将废UCB（约14毫米厚）破碎成小颗粒（<1毫米），从而使金属和非金属充分分解。RAM和主板的SEM图像表明PCB具有多层结构，在磨削机理下有利于部件解离。CPU的所有切割碎屑（主要是Cu和Ti颗粒）都是微尺寸的（< 150μm）和金属完全解离。力学性能分析表明，RAM，UCB和CPU的拉伸强度分别为150.0、72.3和74.4 Mpa，明显低于硬质材料。这意味着通过系统改进和工艺优化，AWJ切割在增强材料去除指标方面具有巨大潜力。因此，这项研究为从电子废物中回收金属资源提供了一种有前途的环保方法。