What home appliances use gold?

Precious metal has been known since ancient times, but with the advent of electronics, its scope has expanded tremendously. This happened due to several of its advantages:

• malleability, which allows to obtain sheets of minimum thickness without heating;
• ductility, providing the production of thin wire (used in microcircuits);
• preservation of properties in aggressive environments (with the exception of a mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids);
• ability to not oxidize, this gives the contacts strong protection against external influences;
• excellent electrical conductivity (after silver and copper).

Reference! The listed properties allow the use of metal in areas such as astronautics, medicine, chemistry, energy, nanotechnology, and automotive.

Ways of application:

• gold foil;
• thin coating;
• small alloy parts with other metals.

Industrial use is constrained by the price: 1 gram of Au costs 1000 rubles on average.

What home electronics contains gold

Modern electronic devices contain this element in the form of the finest spraying on parts. Such a minor inclusion helps to significantly reduce the cost of models and at the same time provide the required level of quality.

Noble metal is present in the circuits of many devices:

• Phones
• gaming consoles;
• Computers
• photo and video cameras;
• printers
• TV sets
• measuring instruments.

On a note! The greatest amount of gold can be found in radio components produced in the 40-60s of the last century. Moreover, its presence in imported products is much lower than in domestic products. In Soviet technology, a high percentage occurs until the mid-80s.

Where exactly is gold used

Precious metal may be present in the following details:

• contacts of processors and controllers;
• conclusions of expansion cards and motherboards;
• hard drive connectors;
• bus contacts (AGP, IDE, PCI);
• headphone plugs and professional sound card outputs.

Important! The percentage of metal is minimal, it can be detected by the yellow color of these elements. In budget devices, gold may not be available, as it is being replaced by cheaper copper and aluminum.

The technique of the Soviet period contains Au in the following components:

• conclusions of microcircuits made of ceramics (plastic cases may include a small amount) and crystal plates;
• capacitors of military radio stations and generators;
• substrate, external area and contact leads of transistors;
• radio tubes (on grids near the cathode);
• relay;
• conclusions and sockets.

Reference! In terms of gold content, capacitors (devices of the Ministry of Defense) and microcircuits take first place.

findings

Information on the possible content of precious metals can be found in several ways:

• see the passport to the device;
• take advantage of radio literature;
• visit amateur radio sites.

On a note! During an external examination of Soviet equipment, the yellow color of the components directly indicates the content of the precious metal. For modern technology, this method of determination is not always true.

We hope that the article helped to understand the question of why gold is used in devices and how to find it.