Gold Wires inside DRAM chip (picture)

[Acidrain]

I thought it would be neat to peel the top off one of these chips on a RAM stick and see the actual gold wires inside. I placed my jewelers loop over my camera lens to get the magnification

 

[eaglekeeper]

Hard to tell by the picture..... but I think the actual gold bonding wires are incapsulated it the black epoxy you peeled off. Those I believe are the pads the gold bonding wires were attacked too.

 

[kaisernine]

What you are looking for generally. First 2 are a dissolved flat chip, rest ceramic.

 

[Acidrain]

What you are looking for generally. First 2 are a dissolved flat chip, rest ceramic.

That's awesome!!
I wasn't looking for anything really, just curious what was inside. I haven't processed anything yet, still collecting and depopulating boards. I read and read about gold being inside all of this stuff and it's hard to imagine so I wanted to see if I could get a glimpse of anything shiny.
Your pictures are fantastic and exactly what I'd like to see! I haven't ran across any pictures of that.
Thank you!

 

[Acidrain]

What you are looking for generally. First 2 are a dissolved flat chip, rest ceramic.

Those wires are SOOOO TINY!! I'd like to see how they're made.

 

[kaisernine]

Keep in mind that a large portion of the ceramic chips are worth more to collectors than the gold inside I only process the damaged ones (missing pins, cracked ect.) Any plastic/epoxy chips I process can't really reuse most of them.

Pictures just since people liked looking

 

[Acidrain]

Keep in mind that a large portion of the ceramic chips are worth more to collectors than the gold inside I only process the damaged ones (missing pins, cracked ect.) Any plastic/epoxy chips I process can't really reuse most of them.

Pictures just since people liked looking

What did you use to expose them like that? That's super cool!

 

[adam mizer]

Here are some small flat packs.
I have these for near 20 years so guessing early 2000's and mostly from hard drive boards

 

[kaisernine]

What did you use to expose them like that? That's super cool!

Ceramics you can lift the lids with a torch, the flat packs you can use a co2 laser or remove the epoxy with hot sulfuric acid (not exactly the safest method) requires a lot of washing and reapplying until you remove the center to reach bond wires while the chip sits on a hot plate and the drops of sulfuric destroys the resin ( this requires a fume hood ), there probably some other ways but those are all I ever used - maybe other members will share.

Both of the mentioned above methods for the epoxy chips involve risks of instant blindness if you do this as a warning co2 lasers and concentrated sulfuric accidents are not forgiving.

There are several threads on this forum on incineration however that can walk you through a safer method of recovery, the methods above are more for show / personal collection.