# Black IC's - a look inside



## samuel-a (Nov 29, 2011)

In case someone ever wondered how it looks like.

This is the silicon wafer from a square black IC with gold wires still attached.
(click the image for high resolution)





A wafer from a black chips found on memory sticks.
(click the image for high resolution)


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## resabed01 (Nov 29, 2011)

Interesting, thanks for posting those. I have one question, the first picture, is that after incineration or acid bath? Or both?


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## Rodthrower18 (Nov 29, 2011)

That's pretty awesome Sam thanks! Almost makes me want to start trying to depopulate northbridges and all the rest of this ICs but it's just not worth it with my tiny volume


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## samuel-a (Nov 29, 2011)

Rodthrower18

This is not from n/s bridge, just a common Black IC.
I'll upload one of the n/s bridge later if theres anything to see.

resabed01

The picture was taken after a chemical treatment.


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## joem (Nov 29, 2011)

samuel-a said:


> Rodthrower18
> 
> This is not from n/s bridge, just a common Black IC.
> I'll upload one of the n/s bridge later if theres anything to see.
> ...



Hi sam
Great picture. Can you post a picture of the top before treatment so we know what to look for, thanks


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## samuel-a (Nov 30, 2011)

joem

Item "D" in this link is similar to the chip on the first picture:
http://tinyurl.com/brga754


Here is another one from a large n/s bridge (gold corner - Item "A"):
The square (wafer + wires) is a bit over 1/2 inch wide... Gold wires almost twice as long then the regular square IC.




Click for High resolution
http://www.goldnscrap.com/images/IMGP2508-1.JPG

Sorry for the quality, that's the best i could get with my 60$ pocket camera.


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## joem (Nov 30, 2011)

Thanks again, and don't be sorry, your information has always been top notch.


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## goldenchild (Nov 30, 2011)

Samuel,

Are the wires in these chips solid gold or plated? Seems like they would have to be solid. Im basing this on their size and the 10 gram yeild patnor had in his batch.


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## maynman1751 (Nov 30, 2011)

Great pics Sam! Been wondering what they looked like undressed. What acid treatment did you use? Nitric?


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## samuel-a (Nov 30, 2011)

goldenchild 

I believe they are soild gold at high purity, GSP once mentioned they are one of the very few items in electronics which are made of high purity gold.



maynman1751 

No, i did not use nitric acid.
With your permission, i would prefer not to disclose how i did it, for the moment.

Few days ego i had a... "2 + 2" moment while in my lab... and i found a relatively "easy" way to strip the chips clean.

I'm now working to develop it into a single flowing process, with the hope of keeping things both cost effective and SAFE.
This method may be somewhat dangerous and controversial, i'm sure not everybody will approve it, so, for the moment, i prefer not to induce anyone to try and possibly hurt himself for an untested and unproven process.

Until than, i'll keep it to myself, with the hope you will understand.


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## dtectr (Nov 30, 2011)

samuel-a said:


> goldenchild
> 
> I believe they are soild gold at high purity, GSP once mentioned they are one of the very few items in electronics which are made of high purity gold.
> 
> ...


Sam 
No need to apologise for protecting what basically amounts to proprietary information at this point. "Sharing" doesn't mean giving away your livelihood. 
We understand.


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## maynman1751 (Nov 30, 2011)

No problem Sam! I understand completely. Maybe someday you can share your 'secret'. Until then Thank You for all your contributions to the "cause". John.


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## samuel-a (Dec 1, 2011)

dtectr, maynman1751

Thank you for that.

For now, i can report that things look positive for this process, and the next step is to scale up to 1lb batchs and see from there.

Here is a result from very small batch of N/S bridge chips:


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## philddreamer (Dec 1, 2011)

Interesting Sammy, I can't wait to see the final result! 8) 

Phil


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## goldenchild (Dec 1, 2011)

If you could ramp this process up to have the capability of processing 1 pound batches with an end result like in your latest picture... I would gladly pay for that information.


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## maynman1751 (Dec 2, 2011)

Sam, I do believe that you have 'stumbled' onto something that has a lot of potential. I would love to be able to eliminate all the crap from these devices without having to incinerate, mash, filter, so on. Great Job!!!!!! Keep us posted. I know a lot of people are interested in your progress.


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## publius (Dec 2, 2011)

goldenchild said:


> If you could ramp this process up to have the capability of processing 1 pound batches with an end result like in your latest picture... I would gladly pay for that information.


*What goldenchild said!!!* :mrgreen:


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## samuel-a (Dec 3, 2011)

I've been asked privately what was the size of the "small batch" in my latest picture.
Here's some more info and yield data.

First, i need to explain what exactly i've been processing. In this case, only the top, plastic part of the N/S bridges were processed.
The fibrous parts was (were?) put aside for later processing as they also contain gold.

So, i've been processing 49.2g of those plastic tops of different sizes. about 32 pieces in total. The part were seperated by hand.

Plastic was eliminated, gold wires washed & dissolved in AR, precipitated with SMB, washed with acid/water and dried.
The resulting clean gold powder weigh 0.62g (+- 0.01).

I reckon i did had some minute losses along the way, both when gold was in wire form and as powder while washed.
I can only give an educated guess as to how much gold really did got lost, though, in my opinion the loss is no more then 0.07g


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## philddreamer (Dec 3, 2011)

Thank you Samuel! 8)


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## dtectr (Dec 3, 2011)

i have recently processed some north/south bridges, a la Pat, and due to some dumb-a** mistakes on my part, there were some minor losses from my batch, as well. 
I processed the fiber bottoms first and was reminded how a little gold can look like a lot. The yields were so low from this small control sample, that it was nearly unmeasurable. The best you could say was that it was visible. 
However, the lids were quite impressive. Most of my numbers are on my camera, so photos and numbers will appear simultaneously.


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## Rodthrower18 (Dec 3, 2011)

I feel like a kid waiting on Christmas with this process lol. You said you remove the fibrous parts, how? I had a hard enough time dealing with the on n/s bridge set that I experimented with yesterday. How would you process the fiber part of it? Sorry for all of the questions, curiosity killed the cat not the rodthrower lol.


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## dtectr (Dec 3, 2011)

I remove the chips from their respective boards with heat. 

they are all soaked in HCl to which a little hydrogen peroxide or potassium nitrate has been added to remove solder. always test this solution to make sure no gold has been dissolved. 
when the solder can be scraped off, do so. this indicates that the solution is likely saturated with base metals and so unlikely to have PMs in solution. Still test with stannous.

I then split the halves of the chip, using pliers nowadays and thumb and forefinger. 
fiber bottoms go into AP or poor mans AR. I will be accumulating a bunch before I bother processing them. 

they can be incinerated first to get rid of excess plastics or run through a paper shredder to increase area exposed to solution.
edited : clarity


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## samuel-a (Dec 3, 2011)

dtectr said:


> Most of my numbers are on my camera, so photos and numbers will appear simultaneously.



Would be nice to compare yields to see if we both land on similar numbers using different methods.


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## Rodthrower18 (Dec 4, 2011)

dtectr said:


> I then split the halves of the chip, using pliers nowadays and thumb and forefinger.
> fiber bottoms go into AP or poor mans AR. I will be accumulating a bunch before I bother processing them.
> 
> 
> edited : clarity




Whoa whoa whoa....you can out fiber bottoms in poor mans ar? Consider my mind blown right now.


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## Geo (Dec 4, 2011)

after you remove the solder from the fiber theres actually very little base metal left. there should be no reason poor mans AR wouldnt work. the solution would be dirty but im sure its not as dirty as some solutions ive worked with.


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## Rodthrower18 (Dec 4, 2011)

Can this same thing be done reasonably to the fibrous left overs on the green and black CPUs after the pins are removed with a torch ?

Geo, did you mean Dirty solution as in it needs to be filtered well, or dirty as in run twice through ar? Also is this after crushing these bad boys, or just laying them flat in your glassware of choice and covering them with hcl and proceeding as normal with poor mans ar?

Just trying to get my ducks in a row as it were lol. This week is going to be a very busy one for me if this pans out(pun intended haha).

Thanks everyone!

Sorry for cluttering your thread Sam I think I'll branch any further questions to their own thread.


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## Geo (Dec 4, 2011)

a dirty solution is a PM bearing solution that also contains contamination whether its trash or other (base) metals. as for CPU's the fiber kind is akin to the same concept as fingers (relatively speaking) in that you have a fiber board with copper overlay with a layer of nickle and a layer of gold over that. after you remove the solder the overlay is all thats left. the reason this isnt too bad for AR as apposed to pins is theres alot less base metal to contend with when dealing with overlay instead of gold plated copper or brass pins. the solution will not be clean AuCl, but will have a green color of copper and nickle. the drop will look darker than clean solution and will need to be dissolved a second time to remove the impurities. i have made a habit of double and sometimes triple refining. its not the accepted procedure but i routinely use poor mans AR to dissolve things like IC packages without prior processing and the solution is very nasty looking with alot of base metal (if you do this make sure all metal gets dissolved or your gold will plate back out) then i filter well and evaporate to a very thick solution. then i allow to cool and dilute by as much as 4x with water before i drop the gold.

i am going to edit this to include: when i said IC packages without prior processing, i should have said they still need to be incinerated but no washing or panning or prior chemical processes. at first i was using AP to remove as much copper as i could before poor mans AR but i found that if you insure all the metal has been dissolved the copper is not a problem.


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## patnor1011 (Dec 5, 2011)

Interestingly I was also trying dissolving procedure as Sam is doing here but I am not introducing heat so ti is rather slow on my side :mrgreen:


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## trashmaster (Dec 5, 2011)

Hello Sam.

Thanks, we have to many people that read only part of a thread and think they can recover gold and then they are the ones who think they can refine gold . I thank you that you will not release the process that you are working on till you have THE SAFETY AND HEALTH ISSUES WORKED OUT..

For this I thank you and my hat is off to you ;;;;;;;;;;;


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## jaun (Jan 1, 2012)

Deleted


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## Claudie (Jan 1, 2012)

Hot Concentrated Sulfuric Acid :shock:


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## butcher (Jan 1, 2012)

Juan,
I just hope you goggled all of the safety of doing this. Take extreme care that stuff makes very nasty burns, 
Just make sure you have a parachute before you jump out of airplanes.

you have heard that new song? burned to the bone?

https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&hl=en&source=hp&biw=1152&bih=660&q=hot+concentrated+sulfuric+acid+burns&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2&oq=hot+concentrated+sulfuric+acid+burns&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=s&gs_upl=0l0l0l1719l0l0l0l0l0l0l0l0ll0l0

more 

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&biw=1152&bih=660&gbv=2&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=sulfuric+acid+burns&btnG=Search&oq=sulfuric+acid+burns&aq=f&aqi=g1g-S2g-mS2&aql=&gs_sm=s&gs_upl=4828l9016l0l12594l16l8l0l0l0l5l1046l6061l5-4.1.3l8l0


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## jaun (Jan 2, 2012)

Jump out of a plane without a parachute,,, never tried that one before.

Thanks for the links,,, nasty indeed. :shock: 

Anyone stupid enough not to wear safety gear, and not doing their research before working with acids or any chemicals, WILL GET HURT Sooner Or Later, That’s a fact.

I know some people just don’t listen,,, but there’s not much we can do about it.


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## philddreamer (Jan 2, 2012)

I always jumped with 2 parachutes... & brother, I'm I glad I did!!! :mrgreen: 

Phil


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## jaun (Jan 3, 2012)

It worked great. 
I took 3 bridge ic’s (flat packs with gold corner). I heated the sulphuric on hotplate (on 3), and after an hour it was done. (Acid became black,,, you can’t see anything)
All that was left was the chip and the gold bonding wires, still attached to the chip,,, the same as the pics Sam posted.

But I did a test with nitric,,, and I like it more than the sulphuric.
I put one flat pack in 55% nitric and heated it also to 3, for one hour.
All that was left was the chip and the bonding gold wires (and some powder residue, but I washed it off easy).

With the nitric the bonding wires came loose from the chip,,, but that doesn’t matter, they are heavy. 

Goanna do a big batch tomorrow.


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## Oz (Jan 3, 2012)

Thanks for sharing your work Juan. As noted above, hot concentrated sulfuric acid is very dangerous to work with. Always plan for an accident and be prepared for it. 

Any pictures Juan?


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## jaun (Jan 3, 2012)

Hi oz 

Yes I know,, that’s why I want to use the nitric method. Can u imagine what will happen when that beaker brakes and spill the hot concentrated sulphuric … NASTY!!

I will take my camera with tomorrow. 

The only problem with the nitric is gonna be powder residue,,, but that shouldn’t be a problem. The powder you can wash off, the silica chips and gold wires sinks down to the bottom fast,, just add AR and dissolve the gold,,, and decant,,, leaving the residue behind,, as easy as that.

But I will make a plan tomorrow. I am doing 800g. (gold corner Flat packs)


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## skippy (Jan 3, 2012)

Jaun, how much fuming was there from the reaction? Was there smoke?
The times I have used hot concentrated sulfuric I was able to keep the sulfuric mist to an
relative minimum by covering the vessel with fiberglass insulation.
The mist is carcinogenic.

All precautions should be taken. 
If the vessel were to break and the acid were come into contact with moisture or liquid or oxidizable matter the results could be
horrific. It might react explosively with concrete, but I am just guessing on that.

It seems potentially interesting for processing higher value escrap like IC chips and such, but no one 
should do this without doing some serious precautions and planning. Even substituting nitric acid, a large amount of boiling hot concentrated oxdizing acid 
is dangerous.


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## samuel-a (Jan 3, 2012)

I have disclosed the entire process here:
http://www.goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=12508


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