Posts Tagged ‘applications’
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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 10th, 2010
Another nanogold start-up
This news release describing the award by The University of Maryland’s Industrial Partnerships Program of $174,420 (for developing a polymer coating for gold nanorods that enables them to survive biological conditions) has alerted me to the fact that there is a new company supplying gold nanorods; start-up company NanoRods LLC. Great to see new companies entering this market….
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December 21st, 2009
New Book – Gold Science and Applications
I’m excited to announce that a new book ‘Gold – Science and Applications’ has now been published.
There have been many excellent books written on certain aspects of the science and technology of gold, most notably the book of the Hanau gold conference, held in 1996 (“Gold. Progress in Chemistry, Biochemistry and Technology”, edited by Hubert Schmidbaur and published in 1999) and there are several new books covering specific sectors of gold science e.g. on catalysis, chemistry and nanotechnology (see here). However, for those seeking a broader reference source on gold and covering all technical sectors, the most appropriate book on gold, Gold Usage by Bill Rapson and Theo Groenewald, was published over 30 years ago in 1978. The world of gold has changed considerably since then. A few years ago Chris Corti and I believed it was time for an updated book that reflects the more recent developments.
With the co-operation of some of the leading experts in their field, we have attempted to produce a book that is a worthy successor to ‘Rapson’ and to provide an authoritive source of information. We have attempted to cover all the main scientific areas as well as the main areas of application. In some cases this has required some very detailed scientific chapters; other fields require less specific detail and have focused more on the practical application. In addition, to help readers place this science and technology in the context of a much wider gold market, a chapter on the supply, demand and pricing of gold is included. Taken together, our aim for the book is to appeal to both those working in academia and industry.
If you are interested, your can read more and purchase it here .
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November 10th, 2009
Commercialising New Uses for Gold
Today World Gold Council announces new strategic initiatives to develop the long-term industrial markets for gold. WGC will co-invest with venture firms to accelerate the development and commercialisation of gold-based innovative technologies. Through its new Innovation Partnerships, WGC will support industrial partners engaged in the development of new practical applications for gold.
We believe that our unrivalled knowledge of the industrial uses for gold puts us in a unique position to help facilitate and accelerate commercialisation of gold-based innovations. As I explained in the press release, both the Innovation Partnership programme and our increasing engagement with the early-stage venture community will help ensure that promising gold-research currently emerging from university labs has the best possible chance of quickly reaching the market place and being commercialised.
If you are interested in collaborating with World Gold Council please let us know.
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November 4th, 2009
The High Reliability Choice in Semiconductor Packaging
The reliability of gold in microelectronic packaging makes it the standard, by which all other materials must be judged. Even though the price of gold has risen significantly in this decade the usage of gold in microelectronic packaging has continued to grow as efforts to make the most cost-effective usage of gold through spot plating, plating thickness reduction and the usage of thinner bonding wire have been successful. Gold wire remains the main wire material for ball bonding in microelectronics assembly and has proven reliable in billions of devices over many years. However, high gold prices are increasingly forcing a shift towards cheaper copper wire, despite concerns over reliability. Today, in a paper with Lee Levine of Process Solutions Consulting at IMAPS 2009 we will be explaining that there is a need to obtain higher quality reliability data with gold and copper wires supported by state of the art analytical methods. This will help quantify and validate the relative merits of the two metals in this critical application. We also point out that design-for-recycling should also be an important consideration in material selection. The precious metals (mainly gold) constitute a very substantial proportion of the material value of waste electronic and electrical equipment (WEEE) and gold can be considered as a key component of the economic viability of WEEE recycling.
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October 14th, 2009
Powder Metallurgy & Gold
I’ve just received a complimentary e-version of the International Journal of Powder Metallurgy “Precious Metals” Focus Issue. This Journal is published 6 times a year, bringing the latest news in the powder metallurgy and particulate materials industries.In his editorial, Alan Lawley states:
Precious metal powders find wide commercial applications because of their unique characteristics and properties, including thermal/electrical conductivity, corrosion resistance, solderability, and stability at high temperatures, coupled with reliability. Applications include conductive adhesives, dental restorations, catalysts, and sensors to monitor temperature and corrosion, and to detect gases. In comparison with ferrous powder metallurgy (PM), particulate precious metal science and technology receives limited exposure and press in industry news coverage. This “Focus Issue,” coordinated by Pierre Taubenblat and Joe Strauss, traces the history of particulate precious metal technology and gives an overview of market dynamics and current and near-term industrial applications. Comprehensive reviews of precious metal powder production methods and the manufacture of dental restorations are also included.
With so much happening in the application of gold in nanotechnology, catalysis and chemistry, it is good to see the metallurgical applications of gold being highlighted….
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October 13th, 2009
China and Gold Catalysis
The Yantai area of China is located at the Shandong Peninsula in the east of the country and it is the biggest base for production, mining and processing of gold, ranking the first in output and natural reserves of gold in China. There is another reason for Yantai to be associated with gold though - catalysis. I was glad to see this recent news, reporting the visit of Prof. Haruta to the Institute of Applied Catalysis of Yantai University. Professor Caixia Qi at Yantai University has been working on the use of gold as a catalyst for a good few years now. The Institute’s gold catalyst (YD-2) has already been applied in a protective gas mask device manufactured by Shanxi Ruishi Protective Technology Co. Ltd in Shanxi province. With improvements in longer-term durability (currently the focus of the research group), wider application in other air purification products should be achieved.
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October 9th, 2009
SEMICON Europa 2009
This week I’ve been at SEMICON Europa as part of World Gold Council’s programme to support gold’s use in the electronics industry. I want to quickly mention one area that, although not part of our programme, does provide some rather visually stunning uses of gold; epitaxy reactor reflectors. These parts, a key component in semiconductor manufacturing, were exhibited by Gold Tech Industries. Unfortuantely I didn’t have my camera to capture an image but you can see one example part here!
The technical basis for heat control using gold coatings (the principle under-pinning the above application) was described some years ago in this Gold Bulletin paper.
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October 8th, 2009
Plasmonics featured in Nature
An excellent news feature has appeared in this weeks edition of Nature (for those of you with the required access the PDF is here).
Written by Joerg Heber, the article discusses at length the remarkable progress made in the field over the last decade. Most exciting to me is the sheer range of potential applications a better understanding of plasmonics has opened up – indeed the article highlights a number of fields including solar cells, biochemical sensing, optical computing and even cancer treatments.
Here at the World Gold Council we are active in promoting and supporting work in all of these areas (for example see here), and are always interested to hear of new application-based areas of research. Details of our funding model can be found here.
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September 28th, 2009
Flashback – gold electroforming
This month’s Chemistry World, the publication of the Royal Society of Chemistry, has an interesting regular feature ‘Flashback’, that looks at what the chemistry world was talking about decades previously. September’s issue looks at the gold crown worn by the Prince of Wales at his investiture on 1st July 1969. The article explains how the crown was, at the time, the largest gold electroform on record. It was made in the laboratory of Engelhard Industries after the design had been presented to BJS Electroplating Company.
Electroforming remains a widely used process for making both decorative and technical parts in gold, whilst minimising weight and cost associated with solid gold pieces.
Trevor Keel
Richard Holliday
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