4 ms·

It would replace a lot of copper in electronics, gold has lots of nice properties for that application (it's used already for chip pins and in some space/avioni

It would replace a lot of copper in electronics, gold has lots of nice properties for that application (it's used already for chip pins and in some space/avionics systems) except it's price precludes mass production use. It's also inert, non-toxic and easily recycled - it'd be useful just for that.

deleted 7y ago
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cogman10 7y ago
Nah, copper is used for electronics because it has a lower resistivity than gold. It is just as easily recycled, we just don't do it because it is cheap. They gold plate leads because gold doesn't corrode. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_resistivity_and_conductivity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_resistivity_and_con... It doesn't matter much in the long run, but just want to squash out the notion that gold is a better electrical conductor. It isn't. In fact, where weight matters, aluminum is often preferred over copper. While copper is more conductive, aluminum has a high conductivity:weight ratio (that is, you use a bigger wire, which can conduct more and weighs less than the same resistance on a copper wire). Gold is the worst of both worlds. It is heavier than copper and only slightly better at conductivity than aluminum.
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  As a resident of the salt belt, automotive electronics that can’t corrode sounds very appealing.
  - smolder 7y ago
    My thoughts went to corrosion as well. Rust (oxides, not the programming language) has a huge cost associated with it. Abundant gold could conceivably result in building materials that are much longer lasting. Certainly we could gold plate more things.
klodolph 7y ago
It would be used in addition to copper. Circuit boards are currently made out of copper for various reasons, I don't think you would use gold for PCB traces even if the materials were cheap. With copper you can use ferric chloride and simple photoresist to etch the board, with gold you would need something more powerful like aqua regia. Gold also has some undesirable properties like the various awful gold-aluminum intermetallics that it can form, and it suffers from poor solderability. I think more likely we would see ENIG as a standard / default plating instead of HASL. Traces would continue to be made out of copper or aluminum depending on what you are optimizing for, plated with gold (over a layer of zinc or nickel) to protect them from corrosion, and with various tin/nickel/etc pads for solderability.

deleted 7y ago

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cogman10 7y ago

Nah, copper is used for electronics because it has a lower resistivity than gold. It is just as easily recycled, we just don't do it because it is cheap. They gold plate leads because gold doesn't corrode. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_resistivity_and_conductivity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_resistivity_and_con... It doesn't matter much in the long run, but just want to squash out the notion that gold is a better electrical conductor. It isn't. In fact, where weight matters, aluminum is often preferred over copper. While copper is more conductive, aluminum has a high conductivity:weight ratio (that is, you use a bigger wire, which can conduct more and weighs less than the same resistance on a copper wire). Gold is the worst of both worlds. It is heavier than copper and only slightly better at conductivity than aluminum.

Scoundreller 7y ago
As a resident of the salt belt, automotive electronics that can’t corrode sounds very appealing.
- smolder 7y ago
  My thoughts went to corrosion as well. Rust (oxides, not the programming language) has a huge cost associated with it. Abundant gold could conceivably result in building materials that are much longer lasting. Certainly we could gold plate more things.

klodolph 7y ago

It would be used in addition to copper. Circuit boards are currently made out of copper for various reasons, I don't think you would use gold for PCB traces even if the materials were cheap. With copper you can use ferric chloride and simple photoresist to etch the board, with gold you would need something more powerful like aqua regia. Gold also has some undesirable properties like the various awful gold-aluminum intermetallics that it can form, and it suffers from poor solderability. I think more likely we would see ENIG as a standard / default plating instead of HASL. Traces would continue to be made out of copper or aluminum depending on what you are optimizing for, plated with gold (over a layer of zinc or nickel) to protect them from corrosion, and with various tin/nickel/etc pads for solderability.