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March 10th, 2010
SEMICON China
World Gold Council, is helping to train engineers and chip designers in the technology of wire bonding. At next week’s SEMICON China 2010 we are sponsoring a seminar entitled ‘Materials Science of Wire Bonding & Wire Bond Reliability’ in conjunction with SEMI. This will include best practice in wire bonding technology and materials selection issues. To register for this seminar please click here.
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March 8th, 2010
Colliding gold creates new matter
A never-before seen particle, called an anti-hypertriton, has been created for the first time during experiments at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) on Long Island, New York. Particles of gold were collided just short of the speed of light (186,000 miles per second) and more than 100 million collisions were made to collect the data. The matter created during the experiments is believed to have been in existence immediately after the creation of the universe – the so-called “Big Bang”.
Unfortunately, we’re a bit short of particles physicists here at the WGC, so if you’d like to read more the work is available here as a science advanced online publication.
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March 5th, 2010
Video perspectives
The American Chemical Society’s journal Physical Chemistry Letters has a nice series of video perspectives on papers it has recently published. This one, for example, features reseachers from Jin Zhong Zhang’s lab at CalTech speaking about their article Biomedical Applications of Shape-Controlled Plasmonic Nanostructures: A Case Study of Hollow Gold Nanospheres for Photothermal Ablation Therapy of Cancer.
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March 3rd, 2010
Anticancer gold complexes
The current issue of Chemistry – A European Journal leads with a nice paper entitled ”Stable Anticancer Gold(III)-Porphyrin Complexes: Effects of Porphyrin Structure”. Gold complexes have long been investigated as potential treatments of a variety of ailments, and this paper represents some of the very latest research in the field. A full abstract can be found here. -
March 1st, 2010
Black gold electroplating
NEW Black gold electroplating on the market!
There is considerable interest in black colour effects on gold jewellery. To date, this has usually been achieved by electroplating black rhodium or black ruthenium layers on carat gold items or by oxidation of special carat gold alloy compositions (see special gold colours on utilisegold.com ) Whilst black rhodium or ruthenium offer satisfactory black coatings, there has been a desire to have a real black gold. At last, Wieland GmbH, Germany, have produced one, called NEOPAL. This is claimed to be “an innovative new decorative surface treatment which deposits a high quality layer of deep black gold plating”. This is a ‘first’ in gold electroplating solutions. I have a ring plated in Neopal; it is a lovely bluish black colour that is very attractive. Neopal is easy to use, with a layer thickness of <10 microns, and has uniform deposition characteristics with a hardness of 60 – 75 HV. For further information, contact Wieland – www.wieland-international.com
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February 26th, 2010
Nanosphere in the MIT Technology Review
The Technology Review, published by MIT, is a great source of information on new innovations in a range of fields including energy, materials and medicine. In the latest issue Nanosphere, the US-based diagnostics company, features on a couple of occasions. Firstly, the company has been selected by the review as one of the world’s most innovative companies in their TR50 award. This is a significant award, placing Nanosphere in the company of various corporate giants such as DuPont, GlaxoSmithKline, Google & Apple. Their gold-based technology, called the Verigene system, has also been highlighted with a nice breakdown of the components.
Congratulations to Nanosphere on this notable award
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February 24th, 2010
A new gold centre of excellence?
On the way back to London from the Nano Tech 2010 event in Tokyo I was fortunate enough to spend a couple of days in the city of Yantai, which is situated in Shandong Province, China. Back in 2008 the World Gold Council supported the work of Caixia Qi, a professor of chemistry at the local university, for her exciting work in the field of gold catalysis. Her group is making great progress in identifying stable, highly effective gold catalysts for a range of applications based around the oxidation of carbon monoxide.The region is steeped in gold, quite literally. The area is dotted with gold mines, and is home to some of China’s largest gold mining companies. Everywhere you look the chinese symbol for gold (shown above) is prominent – it really is quite something.
During my brief stay, I met the president of the Yantai Gold Bureau and senior representatives of both the Shandong Zhaojin group (one of the largest gold mining companies in China) and Yantai University. The purpose of these meetings was to discuss the potential of forming a centre of excellence at Yantai University for research into new scientific and technological uses of gold. It transpired that all parties were fully supportive of the venture, including local government, meaning the centre will proceed under Professor Qi’s stewardship at the university.
This is a most exciting venture, bringing together considerable resource and expertise in the field. Here at the WGC we applaud the hard work and tenacity of Professor Qi in bringing the centre of excellence ever closer to fruition, and look forward to building on our already strong relationship in the future.
Update, 25th Feb 2010. Below is a picture of our delegation visiting the fantastic local gold musuem, where we all were able to pick up a 12.5kg bar of pure gold!
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February 22nd, 2010
Gold Demand Trends
Last week saw the release of WGC’s Gold Demand Trends publication reporting on gold demand for Q4 2009. In the fourth quarter, gold demand for industrial and dental applications recorded its third consecutive quarter-onquarter improvement and its first annual gain in more than two years. Demand totalled 99.7 tonnes, 11% higher than the fourth quarter of 2008. Nevertheless, demand in 2009 was down 16% on 2008 levels. Electronics demand, which for most of the last 18 months has been a severe casualty of the global economic crisis, rebounded strongly in Q4, jumping 25% relative to year earlier levels in a very positive indication that restocking of inventory is taking place on the back of a more optimistic economic outlook. Read more here.
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February 19th, 2010
Semiconductor Packaging News
Over the last few weeks we kicked-off the debate about gold vs copper bonding wire in semiconductor packaging (see here and here).
Semiconductor Packaging News have just featured this interview with me.
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February 17th, 2010
NanoComposix – innovating solutions
Regular readers have probably worked out by now that we love to see gold being used in innovative and useful ways. The San Diego-based outfit NanoComposix are achieving just this, with a number of exciting R&D programmes running alongside their core business of supplying high specification nanoparticles to industry.
The company’s R&D programme is particularly robust, with a number of different projects currently ongoing. One which caught my eye was the use of gold nanoparticle matrices for MALDI-MS tissue imaging. This work has the potential to enhance the detection, identification, and analysis of small biomolecules directly from tissue surfaces.
If anyone reading wants to get in touch with the company feel free to contact me, or go to them directly.
Richard Holliday
Trevor Keel
Chris Corti
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