Black IC's - a look inside

[Rodthrower18]

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.

 

[dtectr]

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

 

[samuel-a]

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.

 

[Rodthrower18]

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.

 

[Geo]

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.

 

[Rodthrower18]

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.

 

[Geo]

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.

 

[patnor1011]

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:

 

[trashmaster]

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 ;;;;;;;;;;;

 

[jaun]

Deleted

 

[Claudie]

Hot Concentrated Sulfuric Acid :shock:

 

[butcher]

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

 

[jaun]

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.

 

[philddreamer]

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

Phil

 

[jaun]

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.

 

[Oz]

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?

 

[jaun]

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)

 

[skippy]

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.

 

[samuel-a]

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