when you think of gold you probably think of jewelry gold bars or even if
you're old like me goldschlager but gold is actually extremely common and
important in electronics as well you've probably seen it on contacts for
everything from RAM to HDMI to memory cards or these CPU pillars from
ltdstore.com they're actually way softer than i never touched one before
but why is it used so widely i mean copper does a fine job of conducting
electricity so why do we need to use gold well you're right about copper but
gold is superior in some key ways that make it a really good choice for certain
applications for one gold is very non-reactive and resists corrosion and
tarnishing even though gold is slightly less conductive than copper it still
offers electrons extremely little resistance and you don't have to worry
about it reacting with chemicals in the environment as much as you do with copper which is why this baby is still
looking good and considering that most electronic components use low voltages
and current levels a small amount of tarnish on the conducting material can
have a big impact on signal integrity so for intricate connections many
manufacturers don't take their chances with anything other than gold this leads
well into the next point gold is a soft incredibly ductile metal it's very easy
to work into any shape and size you might need and although copper can
obviously be drawn into wire gold is even softer and can be stretched thinner
making it ideal when you think about how small some of these connections are
we're talking only a few micrometers meaning gold's softness combined with
its relative non-reactivity make it a great choice in fact gold is very
popular for what's called wire bonding the act of connecting a semiconductor
die to the package that holds it like what you might see on your typical
desktop CPU gold can carry a lot of heat without melting or cracking so it won't
hurt your performance just because it's inside the hot environment of your CPU
package this is especially important in automotive applications our cars are
becoming packed with more and more electronics some of which control critical systems you don't want an
autonomous driving feature to fail when you're going down the highway at 70
miles an hour so gold is used because it's resistant to the thermal and
environmental hazards your car can encounter while it's in motion
additionally gold is very easy for modern manufacturing devices to bond
quickly so it allows chips to roll off the line in large numbers but gold is
also useful for applications you might actually see every day you know how more premium
cables are sold with gold plated connectors although this doesn't do
anything to make your signal faster it does keep the connector from wearing
down as quickly although gold is a soft metal it actually provides good
resistance to wear and tear when it's alloyed with a small amount of another
metal such as nickel okay okay i get it
gold is awesome we love gold but it's super expensive right
how can we even afford our gadgets if all this gold is in all of them
well it turns out that you don't need a whole lot of gold for most electronic
applications since it's mainly used for small intricate connections your typical
smartphone contains less than a dollars worth of gold so even though it's
obviously more expensive than copper its advantages still make it the most
sensible choice in many situations but one thing to keep in mind is that
unfortunately not very much of the total gold used in electronics is ever
reclaimed this means that the cost of gold in manufacturing can and has gone
up over time so if you've got an old pc or phone that you're not selling and
just need to dispose of remember to recycle it properly and to help keep the
price of gold under control that's my psa for today and remember that those
cash for gold places won't accept your old motherboard i've tried big thank you
to ifixit for sponsoring today's video ifixit makes compact tool kits with all
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techwiki so thanks for watching guys if you liked this video hit like hit
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