53. Why buy gold?
Why Buy gold?
Gold has excellent resistance to corrosion. Gold is used in an incredibly wide range of technologies. In each of the applications where gold is used, it provides excellent performance thanks to its unique technical properties. It combines high conductivity with corrosion resistance, and can be physically manipulated, as it is both highly pliable and tough. Gold is also an optional material in medicine and dentistry as a result of its biocompatibility, and in recent years it has emerged as an important nanomaterial.
Conductivity
The ability to efficiently pass both heat and electricity is a key feature of gold, which is why it is mainly common in modern electronics. Its electrical conductivity is surpassed only by copper and silver, but unlike these metals, gold is not affected, making it the most reliable material among the conductive metals.
Corrosion resistance
Gold's resistance to corrosion is one of its most useful properties. In general, the only substance with sufficient power to attack gold is a mixture of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid (royal water). The quality of gold is ideal to use for coating for contacts and connectors in electrical circuits where intimate contact between two metal surfaces is required to ensure the electrical connection.
Malleability
Gold is highly pliable (the degree to which a material can undergo deformation in compression for failure). In its annealed (soft) state, gold can be hammered into a cold plate 0.000013 cm thick. It is possible to crush an ounce of gold into a slab that is more than 9 square meters with a thickness of 0.000018 cm.
Flexibility
Gold is also tough (the number of pullout that occurs before the failure (breaking) of a material in tension). One ounce (31.1 grams) can be pulled out into an 80 km thin gold wire (5 microns diameter). This is an important property for the production of bonding wire used in electronics.
Bio compatibility
Gold has excellent bio compatibility in the human body (the main reason for its use as a dental alloy), hence the number of direct uses of gold as a medical material. Gold possesses a high resistance to bacterial colonization, making the material suitable for implants that are at risk of infection, such as the inner ear.
Catalyst
A catalyst is a substance or material that accelerates the rate of a chemical reaction without being consumed by the reaction itself. Catalysts are an essential part of many different industrial processes used to produce chemicals, foods, and other materials. Gold is an active catalyst for many commercially important reactions and their use in this area.
Nanotechnology
It is important to distinguish between the properties of gold in its bulk form and the properties it exhibits when it manifests itself in the form of small nanoparticles. Unique nanoscale gold properties lead to its use in a growing number of applications.
