Gold inside chips (black, flatpacks - not CPU)

[solar_plasma]

You can't fill a chalice, which is aldready filled. When I came here, I had the same problem, that you have. I had already some successes, I had a relative good chemical background. I was a filled chalice. But the difference between you and me is, I read the forum many hours everyday and I started to read Hoke, because I read again and again posts about how important that should be. So, I got very soon aware of, that I know nothing, compared to the pro's in this forum. In a hurry I threw away everything, I believed to know about refining like a bad selfmade wine and started to fill my chalice with this old, grown wine, perfect in colour, smell and taste, this community is.

Well, friend, even if you only empty your chalice of 5$ wine half ways and fill up with famous 30$ wine, - what do you think, you will get?

So, as long as you don't start searching the forum and read, you will not stop boring us with discussions older than Methusalem, semi-knowledge and simply nonsens.

 

[some888]

When I came here, I had the same problem, that you have.

mate I have no problems so far and I do not know why did you started personal attacks on me?

But the difference between you and me is

the main difference is - for me it is just a temp fun and quite likely I will abandon after some time when it looks it is something else for you, Much more serious

I read the forum many hours everyday.

Come on ..... Do you really have nothing else to do in your life??? If you really need the money so badly and for whatever reason can not work. Go and empty rubbish bins on your street, get aluminium cans and sell it to scrapyard you will earn definitely more then burning computer chips.

you will not stop boring us with discussions older than Methusalem, semi-knowledge and simply nonsens

Where is the nonsense so far?

as I said myself earlier

Despite my attitude ( looks like quite few people think I'm arrogant) I still hope to find some new friends here. Trust me I have no intention to offend anybody and all my post purely "scientific discussion"

But if I will face personal attacks I have no problems not to post as well

 

[patnor1011]

To discuss if something is worth or not to d is very subjective. What you consider as not worthy may be gold mine for another person.
You regard processing IC as waste of time so be it. It is your subjective feeling and your experience. No need to trying to convince others about your view, you presented it and I can accept this. I do not agree and for me it is worth doing it and I am not going to convince you I am right.
We exchanged our views and that is it. No point on tit for tat type of talking or forcing our way of thinking on each other.

Yes, Rusty do have couple of threads where he use centrifuge on separating concentrates from incinerated or milled IC chips.

 

[solar_plasma]

Come on ..... Do you really have nothing else to do in your life??? If you really need the money so badly and for whatever reason can not work. Go and empty rubbish bins on your street, get aluminium cans and sell it to scrapyard you will earn definitely more then burning computer chips.

You are right, I can not work at time, - it is summer vacation and my students just don't want to come to school. So, I spend my time collecting bottles and cans, begging in the streets and mourning people, who make fools of themselves.

 

[some888]

To discuss if something is worth or not to d is very subjective. What you consider as not worthy may be gold mine for another person.
You regard processing IC as waste of time so be it. It is your subjective feeling and your experience. No need to trying to convince others about your view, you presented it and I can accept this. I do not agree and for me it is worth doing it and I am not going to convince you I am right.
We exchanged our views and that is it. No point on tit for tat type of talking or forcing our way of thinking on each other.

Yes, Rusty do have couple of threads where he use centrifuge on separating concentrates from incinerated or milled IC chips.

indeed I found that thread

but that particular centrifuge just freaks me out :lol: :lol: looks really scary device even if it the best centrifuge in the world for gold recovery.

I will try to have a look if car oil filter centrifuges (or juicer) can be adapted for that that purpose

 

[chlaurite]

Do you really have nothing else to do in your life??? If you really need the money so badly and for whatever reason can not work.

I think you'll find that most of the participants here fall into one of three (not necessarily mutually exclusive) categories:

• Professional salvagers/recyclers
• Retired
• Don't need the money, just doing it for fun

Personally, I fall into the last category, and it sounds like you probably do as well. So if you don't enjoy it... Why bother?

I don't mean that rudely, BTW. If you do enjoy the challenge of trying to squeeze gold out of garbage, listen to the regulars here, they know their stuff. If not... As you point out, you most likely would make more as a Walmart greeter.

Heh, I finally got enough RAM and PCI card fingers to try the simplest type of extraction you'll find mentioned around here; If it wildly exceeds my best expectations, I might get a gram of gold out of it; which puts me at an hourly rate well below $1.00/hr. But I've learned a lot from trying it, and hope to learn a lot more. Somehow I don't think I could say the same if I took a second job stocking shelves overnight for a whopping 8x the pay (aka "minimum wage"). :wink:

 

[some888]

hi!

So finally I have another bunch of chips :roll:

I'm taking half of my words back - That part I said I will not process them any more.

Yes there is a gold bonding wires in SOME chips.

So far I found "weird" chips with double bonding first gold bonding from silicone and second copper bonding to outer contacts.

For now I will have probably 60 - 70% of that kind of chips - most definitely containing gold. So it depends really of your luck.... with last bunch of chips I had no luck at all (

Last bunch I had almost on every thing you could read " made in china". This time Malay, Singapore and so on
Looks like if Chinese have a means to save 1 cent from 100$ they will do it

So I decided to precess them selectively. At first taking a sample chip and to find if there is anything inside and then to deal with them only (probably)

Second type of chips - copper with partially gold plating (not sure if worthy unless large quantity)

Third type - nothing worthy (pure copper / aluminium ), they will go to rubbish bin


thanks

P.S in the chips I have gold bonding wires are small, but still quite visible with naked eye, so I even do not need to magnify anything (at least in the chips I have)

P.P.S Yes those kind of bonding wires can be perfectly panned. But myself I will still use multiple filtration until or/if I will make suitable centrifuge
Another thing because of my new hobby my wife smiles, but all the rest whoever I made aware of this just laugh 8) .... Well I do not care as far as they bring me chips :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

 

[solar_plasma]

Another thing because of my new hobby my wife smiles, but all the rest whoever I made aware of this just laugh 8) .... Well I do not care as far as they bring me chips :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

Talking about it seldom gives positive response, mostly they will laugh at you or they will envy. If I talk about it at all, I always emphasize, that this is hobby like fishing and it is as expensive as fishing,but that it is also for a educational purpose.

 

[mitchd]

With Si wafers from IC there may be some catch, I mean all that small transistors and wiring inside die may contain precious metals. I do have about 200-300g again, I will try to find out what is inside. I will put them in hot AR first to remove any traces from where bonding wires were attached and then I will try to grind them to dust and leach in AR again to find out if there is anything valuable inside.

I know this is a old post but you might try HF to disolve the Si and leave any gold or other values unchanged.
HF is really nasty to deal with so be very very careful.

Mitch.

 

[solar_plasma]

This is already been discussed. Conclusions:

Wavers do not contain enough of gold. (Though, maybe they are wrong, - Patnor knows what he is doing )

HF is attempted suicide.

If something would make HF necessary, then sell it, but don't even think of processing it!

 

[g_axelsson]

The silicon die does NOT contain any precious metals inside.
The conductors are made of aluminum, copper and tungsten.

Bond pads on the die is usually made of aluminum.
From http://www.irf.com/technical-info/appnotes/an-1061.pdf page 7

In applications where the current carrying
requirement and hence heat generation is
relatively low, gold wire may be used for
connection to the aluminium bond pads.

Just because I didn't find any articles with gold plated dies doesn't mean there are none, but even if there is a surface treatment with gold on the landing pads for the bond wire, any such surface gold could easily be dissolved by washing it it in aqua regia or similar solution. There could also be left over parts from the gold bonding wires so a quick wash is not wrong.

Göran

 

[patnor1011]

Correct. As we moved on on this topic I only treat them whole to remove traces of wires and plating from sides. I try to remove them whole. They are like glass shards when broken and damaging my plastic pan.

 

[chlaurite]

Not to resuscitate the horse just so I can kick it a bit more :wink: , but what about the EPROMs that show gold through the window? Perhaps they don't actually have any values (beyond the bonding wires) worth dealing with, but they at least appear to have a layer of gold on the die itself.

 

[solar_plasma]

those cmos sensors from digicams and scanners look to me like they have some good precious solder too beside the bond wires

 

[patnor1011]

A lot of dies look golden colored.

 

[shmandi]

Here is a photo of CCD from mini DV camera. You can clearly see gold wires and gold solder

 

[some888]

hi everybody!

there is another "stupid idea" I came up with. :twisted:

so far while processing chips I saw main stages

* burning chips
* panning

Obviously it depends of your panning skills But I realised myself washing considerable amount of gold down the drain

For now to my idea(s)

if to burn the whole chips we ending up with too much crap, that could be actually easily removed before burning them
So I simply grinded off :

* all visible outer contacts on every chip
* reduced it size (width and lengh) by 20%-50% (depends on chip)
* removed a lot of plastic layer (height) around 50% (depends on chip)

To tell you honestly it does not take much time using electric grinder

For now while washing away carbon I had to deal with much more gold concentrated "mash"

and there is another thing I tried


Instead of burning chips I decided to boil them in concentrated sulfuric acid. :lol:
Chips disintegrated just within minutes

But with horrible fumes!!!

Anyway when I looked at remains I was very pleased to see that at least 70% of gold wires were still connected to silicone (something I could never see if burning them) and it was very easy to collect them.
Obviously the method I used I times more expensive and times more dangerous then just burning them
But in my own case is much more quicker and with higher gold yield.

P.S Whoever reads it please do not attempt unless you know how to work with sulfuric acid in details!!!

 

[jimdoc]

Some888,
That idea has been discussed before and is a very dangerous idea.
Don't be surprised if a moderator deletes or alters your post.

Jim

 

[some888]

hi!
Yes it is dangerous
I even pointed out myself
Somebody has to be idiot to try it without appropriate safety gear and knowledge - sadly there are always idiots
From another hand Sulfuric acid is quite expensive for general public and if you have means to get it for cheap probably you should know what you are doing. If not you will spend more on acid then there is gold inside.
in any case If moderator finds it appropriate I have no problems if he deletes the part about sulfuric acid

But grinding chips is another idea - not much danger involved really

 

[solar_plasma]

some888 wrote:

Instead of burning chips I decided to

Interesting. How did you control the reaction temperature? And how did you handle the SO3 smoke?