Gold and Technology

You might be wondering what Gold is doing in this technology blog? I was ignorant about this till last week until I heard from my friend about the uses of gold. I was thinking that Gold has strong role in the financial domain (country’s investment, currency etc) other than making ornaments. Let’s see the other uses of gold

Gold is most useful metal and some of them are: - conducts electricity, does not tarnish, is very easy to work, can be drawn into wire and hammered into thin sheets, alloys with many other metals. The different domains and usage is given below

Electronics

The most important industrial use of gold is in the manufacture of electronics. Electronic devices (solid state) use very low voltages and currents which are easily interrupted by corrosion or tarnish at the contact points. Gold is the highly efficient conductor that can carry these tiny currents and remain free of corrosion.

Electronic components made with gold are highly reliable. Gold is used in connectors, switch and relay contacts, soldered joints, connecting wires and connection strips. A small amount of gold is used in almost every sophisticated electronic device. This includes: cell phones, calculators, personal digital assistants, global positioning system units and other small electronic devices.

Gold is also used in electronic appliances such as television and computers (micro processor connector, memory chips etc).  

Medicine

Gold is used as a drug to treat a small number of medical conditions. Gold is used in injunctions to cure one type of arthritis and also used in the treatment of cancer. Gold is used for patients who cannot close their eyes completely by implanting small amount of gold in the eyelid. Many surgical instruments, electronic equipment and life-support devices are made using small amounts of gold

Aerospace 

Gold is vastly used in every space vehicles launched by NASA since the lubrication, maintenance and repair is absolutely zero.

Gold is used in circuitry because it is a dependable conductor and connector. In addition, many parts of every space vehicle are fitted with gold-coated polyester film. This film reflects infrared radiation and helps stabilize the temperature of the spacecraft. Without this coating, dark colored parts of the spacecraft would absorb significant amounts of heat 

Other domains

Gold is also used in Finance (Coins, Investments) Dentistry, Glass-making,

Future

Gold is too expensive to use by chance. Instead it is used deliberately and only when less expensive substitutes can not be identified. As a result, once a use is found for gold it is rarely abandoned for another metal. This means that the number of uses for gold have been increasing over time.