My results of specific types of IC chips, flatpacks and BGA

[anachronism]

Not possible to remove all. He cut out an exposed part like I used to do too. What remains is inside epoxy about 6-8 times longer than the exposed part and cant be easily removed before incineration.

OK Pat. At least the exposed bit is cut off. I had visions of the whole thing being processed with all the legs.

 

[Tzoax]

Excuse me for asking this but why dont you dissolve all the legs in HCL before you even begin the process?

If you are thinking why i don't dissolve the outer legs before incineration - because HCl will not dissolve copper - it will remove only tin from solder - leaving solid state chlorides from other components of solder (sivler, lead...) - and at the end it would end up like IC chips without tin - contaminated with silver and lead chlorides - altogether with intact legs. Another reason is that legs can be from different materials (kovar, copper alloys...) which complicates it even more. But - then again - it is a good way to chemically remove tin - it will just need a good water rinsing of IC's after process. In my case - it is easier for me to remove solder mechanically than this way. Of course - if i had a large quantity of IC's then it would have sense.

If you are thinking why i don't dissolve the outer legs before incineration but for prolonged time - giving a time for CuCl2 formation / or adding already existing Copper II Chloride so it can dissolve tin and outer legs - because like above - not all legs are made on copper base - if they are iron based adding HCl to them will make iron chloride that dissolves Iron in the same manor like copper II chloride dissolves copper. So - in other words - if IC's are not separated to magnetic (kovar, iron based...) and non-magnetic (copper based) and processed together - that solution will be worthless for future using. But it will still work - i don't use it because of time needed for process and later water rinsing - but most important reason is that - like Patnor explained - it will not dissolve legs for inside anyway....instead - it will dissolve at certain depth of holes where wires was - making a "pocket" in which acids will be accumulated - making it much harder to rinse - and after - while incinerating - making fumes even more deadly.

If you are thinking why i don't dissolve the outer legs after incineration - because carbon adsorption of metal ions - that way i would have metal ions inside of IC's incinerated epoxy all the way at the end - final concentrate. And i always incinerate 3-5 times before that - so i like when ashes don't have metal ions while i am doing that. But at the end of process - when all internal legs are exposed and oxidized, and when all the ashes are gone (with water rinsing) - it is much easier to deal with them. Simply adding HCl will much easily dissolve all internal wires...and outer wires too (in case i didn't remove them mechanically). That way i process smallest types of IC's (without mechanically removing outer legs) - and i never had problems.

It is not that much important to remove outer legs in either way - it just make a IC's a little bit "cleaner" - everything works perfectly well even without it.

I had visions of the whole thing being processed with all the legs.

I always take pictures of IC's before i process them - if you take a look at them you will see that outer legs are removed. Thank you for asking - sorry for the long answer - i hope my explanation is understandable.



This is how final concentrate from ashes looks like.

Bottom view:



Top view:


t
This is side view when i concentrate the concentrate on side by shaking the beaker:





And this is all that was left from IC's - inside of left beaker is concentrate from ashes, inside right beaker is concentrate from copper legs, and i still have silicon dies and internal heat spreaders.



I will mix everything in one beaker and i will add HCl again to try to dissolve heat spreaders - very thin and light copper plates that are already oxidized by incineration.

 

[Tzoax]

After mixing concentrate from ashes, concentrate from copper legs and silicon dies with heatsinks - it is ready for AR. This is picture of AR dissolving metals - on top you can see copper legs/wires floating and dissolving.



Gold is dissolving at last - so at this moment (while gold is still not dissolved) this is a picture of gold bonding wires at the bottom of the beaker.



There was some silver chloride at the end of reaction. So after neutralizing solution and filtration (charmin plug method) this is how solution looks after.



After adding SMB - gold is dropped out from solution (but still not visible) and the blue color is copper || chloride.



After mixing and after few minutes gold starts to be visible. Now it is just time needed for gold powder to settle down.

 

[Tzoax]

Washing gold powder



Drying gold powder



Microscope image



At the beginning there was 347.8g of IC's.



And here is the result:




x = 0.17 x 1000 / 347.8 = 0.48g of gold per kilogram of this kind of IC's.....

That is way lower than the same packages (QFP160) that i tested with PC's IC's.
I really expected much more because it was IC's from medical equipment - from ultrasound machine.
I even processed everything (not only concentrate from ashes, but copper legs, silicon dies and heatsinks)...but still - very little of gold comparing to same package from PCs - 1.21g/kg
https://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=22951#p240808

Other details:

Total weight of chips - 347.8g
Number of chips - 64
Avg weight by 1 chip - 5.43g
Gold recovered - 0.17g
Gold content per 1kg - 0.48g
Gold content per 1 chip - 0.00265625g (by todays price - 0.11$ or 0.1€)

 

[cosmetal]

Tzoax wrote:

"x = 0.17 x 1000 / 347.8 = 0.48g of gold per kilogram of this kind of IC's.....

That is way lower than the same packages (QFP160) that i tested with PC's IC's.
I really expected much more because it was IC's from medical equipment - from ultrasound machine.
I even processed everything (not only concentrate from ashes, but copper legs, silicon dies and heatsinks)...but still - very little of gold comparing to same package from PCs - 1.21g/kg
viewtopic.php?f=33&t=22951#p240808

Other details:

Total weight of chips - 347.8g
Number of chips - 64
Avg weight by 1 chip - 5.43g
Gold recovered - 0.17g
Gold content per 1kg - 0.48g
Gold content per 1 chip - 0.00265625g (by todays price - 0.11$ or 0.1€)"

Possibly caused by the difference in IC manufacturing dates?

James

 

[Tzoax]

Possibly caused by the difference in IC manufacturing dates?

James

It could be... i found assembly date 07 - 00...

And i found the code on IC's nearby that says it is manufactured in 47th week of 1999......i thought that even that is considered "old" enough to consider much gold richer components especially for medical equipment...but it isn't...



Maybe it is because the manufacturer - Acuson. Here is some details about them:

"As per the transaction announced on September 27, 2000, Acuson Corporation was acquired by Siemens AG. Acuson Corporation is engaged in the manufacture, worldwide marketing, and servicing of products for the radiology, cardiology, vascular, ob/gyn applications, and hospital network information systems that generate, display, archive, and retrieve medical diagnostic ultrasound images. The markets for Acuson products are North America, Europe, Australia, Asia, South America, and the Middle East. The company sells its products primarily to hospitals, private and governmental institutions, healthcare agencies, medical equipment distributors, and doctors' offices. The company was founded in 1979 and is headquartered in Mountain View, California."

Since this is the very last components that they made (before Siemens acquired them) is it possible that it is the reason for very low precious metal content inside? I am assuming that they were near bankrupt at the last days and they had a very good reasons to be economic.

 

[Tzoax]

I am considering which type of chips i will test next...and i remember that once long time ago i said i will test this type - very small IC chips with 3 legs like in the picture:



Laptop motherboards, graphic cards and other PC components are loaded with them, they are everywhere. They are tiny....but i want to see are those worth for cherry picking - what is estimate value of one IC chip of this kind.



I checked a few markings and i found it is SOT-23 package.





And i checked what i could expect from them - about 1.7g of gold / kg.



So i think those will be next.

 

[bvdsluis]

I am considering which type of chips i will test next...and i remember that once long time ago i said i will test this type - very small IC chips with 3 legs like in the picture:

Laptop motherboards, graphic cards and other PC components are loaded with them, they are everywhere. They are tiny....but i want to see are those worth for cherry picking - what is estimate value of one IC chip of this kind.

I checked a few markings and i found it is SOT-23 package.


And i checked what i could expect from them - about 1.7g of gold / kg.

So i think those will be next.

Hi Alex,
I was about to ask if you still had plans to see if it was worth the time and effort. Since you showed in your post that these tiny components could contain gold I started to collect them but it takes a lot of patient/effort because to get a bit of volume it will take time.

I just take them off, in the beginning I did some checks with the numbers but you cannot check them all. I have broken a few and I have seen gold in one, you need a bit of luck, if you break it at the wrong place, you will not see anything. You could incinerate of course but I’m not at that stage at the moment.

Good luck with your new experiment and let’s hope this is a new good source for gold.

Bob

 

[Tzoax]

Bob, thank you. Sure there are a gold bonding wires inside of them, i was planning a long time ago to test them... I just burned one SOT-23 triode and i took a picture with microscope.



So it all depends how much of gold they have, i just weighted them - it takes about 100 triodes for 1 gram.
So, for example - if 1kg yields 1 g of gold - by today's price of 37€/kg - each gram would be 0.037€.
On a picture of laptop motherboard above - there are about 50 pcs of triodes on one side - so it is approximately 100 pcs or 1g of triodes per laptop motherboard. So...roughly - it would take about 30 laptop boards to collect triodes that worth 1€. And you can finish that in a few minutes per board - so half an hour / hour.

A good things are:
-they are very easily taking off the PCB's
-they are everywhere
-no one will mind if they are missing from the board (when selling)
-most likely the yields are quite better than 1g of gold/kg
-there are also many other small IC's like this one (but different package)so you can collect them too along with this particular kind

But, at the end it all depends on - is your time worth doing this for 1, 2 or 3 euros per hour.

 

[niks neims]

awesome work Tzoax, but when you are talking about manually removing components each worth about 0.00037 EUR, the line between genius and crazy gets kind of blurry

If you are still looking for ideas what to test next, I wouldn`t mind finding out if there is any gold in these kinds of chips from brown boards:

1)Little IC's in the middle of an optical mouse - there's definitely some gold there, you can brake the chip open and see the gold bond wires with a naked eye, but what would the yield be, Is it worth removing?

2)Connector/plug on the edge of a floppy board - worth breaking off? what's the value, per?

3)Little 4-sided IC's on the "green" side (or underside) of the floppy boards - any gold there at all, worth cutting off?

4)Actually many so called brown-boards (from, TV, etc) have these kinds of chips on their, usually green-colored underside - worth cutting off?

5)Also many brown-boards have some rather large, bulky DIP IC`s, they can be cut off easily enough with a knife, but what's the chance of gold bonding wires being there?

All these type of low-grade boards I currently sell in one category, by the ton, to a local copper manufacturer, no gold is being recovered there and there are absolutely no requirements for intact IC's, I can`t shake the feeling that I am missing out on possible value if I leave these on... I`ve heard that there are some buyers for the category of separated "floppy boards", And of course, I realize I can just sell picked off IC`s (and connectors) separately, weigh them, time myself removing them and draw these conclusions myself... But it is not even close to the same level of satisfaction that would come from knowing for sure how much gold is in each of these type of components

 

[vgecas]

While i was incinerating IC chips from ultrasound machine mentioned above i noticed very interesting thing - a whole lower surface of those IC's is gold plated. First i thought it was heat spreader but it seems it is just some thin gold coating. Does anyone know what is purpose of this layer?
I am not really sure it is really gold but for sure looks like it.

because these chips came from medical equiment i would make a guess that this coating acts as a electromagnetic shield.

 

[Sta7ik]

Hi! Its a great job.
Can we see results for type3 and 4?
Results for BAG SIS and VIA is interesting too.
Thank you for advise.

This is my little contribution to the site, I have tested various types of chips for gold content using these steps:
...

Hi Tzoax,

This is awesome beyond words. I believe I speak for both myself and many others when I say that your "little contribution" has turned into a de facto end-all go-to page for all things on what types of materials produces what amount of gold.

This is awesome. You're awesome. Thank you. Can I PayPal you some money? :lol:

Thank you very much LT_golden, you reminded me of this saying:
"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."

In other words - instead of sending me some money you could share some data from processing specific material - it would bring much more pleasure and benefit to me and to all other members who is interested in gold content...so - when/if you are processing some types of IC's - you are welcome to share your results here - it is very rare that people are willing to share their data but....if you are interested in contribution of knowledge - that is a best way to thank me - to become a part of it.

Hi Alex, good to see you still going strong! Your meticulous work is fantastic.

Yes, your yield on those BGAs seems a bit low, but I have never tried processing only the ones with integrated heatsinks, might be the cause of the low yield. I would still have expected 5+g per kg.

Hi Hein! Thank you, nice to see you. I was very surprised with low yield of those but...now i am preparing some INTEL BGA's (which does not have internal heatsinks) for testing - and i really expect much more gold than 10g/kg. This 4 types of INTEL IC's are most common in PC and laptop motherboards:
1. Weight of IC chip: 1.91g /// side length: 3cm
2. Weight of IC chip: 1.5g /// side length: 2.6cm
3. Weight of IC chip: 1.19g /// side length: 2.4cm
4. Weight of IC chip: 0.8g /// side length: 1.9cm

A.jpg

I am going to test all of those 4 types separately - and with that i will cover most common INTEL types of BGA's.

I will start from the left - with biggest ones - (1.91g, 3cm).

For this test i will use 23 Intel BGA IC chips of this kind - total weight is 44g.

B.jpg

C.jpg

D.jpg

 

[gaurav_347]

awesome work Tzoax, but when you are talking about manually removing components each worth about 0.00037 EUR, the line between genius and crazy gets kind of blurry

If you are still looking for ideas what to test next, I wouldn`t mind finding out if there is any gold in these kinds of chips from brown boards:

1)Little IC's in the middle of an optical mouse - there's definitely some gold there, you can brake the chip open and see the gold bond wires with a naked eye, but what would the yield be, Is it worth removing?

2)Connector/plug on the edge of a floppy board - worth breaking off? what's the value, per?

3)Little 4-sided IC's on the "green" side (or underside) of the floppy boards - any gold there at all, worth cutting off?

4)Actually many so called brown-boards (from, TV, etc) have these kinds of chips on their, usually green-colored underside - worth cutting off?

5)Also many brown-boards have some rather large, bulky DIP IC`s, they can be cut off easily enough with a knife, but what's the chance of gold bonding wires being there?

All these type of low-grade boards I currently sell in one category, by the ton, to a local copper manufacturer, no gold is being recovered there and there are absolutely no requirements for intact IC's, I can`t shake the feeling that I am missing out on possible value if I leave these on... I`ve heard that there are some buyers for the category of separated "floppy boards", And of course, I realize I can just sell picked off IC`s (and connectors) separately, weigh them, time myself removing them and draw these conclusions myself... But it is not even close to the same level of satisfaction that would come from knowing for sure how much gold is in each of these type of components

We process roughly 30 tons of this materia per month . There is gold in those ics and chips . Roughly 300-350 milligram per kg . We haven't rerun our slags yet but we expect there should be more. If I may ask what is the current selling price to your refiner? Based on this answer I will be able to offer you more insight on these boards.

Regards,
Gaurav

 

[rickzeien]

"Roughly 300-350 milligram per kg"

Seems high. Can you confirm?

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

 

[gaurav_347]

"Roughly 300-350 milligram per kg"

Seems high. Can you confirm?

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

Yes I can confirm. We have been recycling the same material from last one year. About 300 tons till now. There is probably more gold in them. We haven't re run our slags till now. From one ton of such boards you will get anywhere 12 - 14kgs of ics and chips mixed. Ics covering 96 percent of the total weight. That's roughly 3.6 to 4 grams of gold and about 20 grams of silver just from these ics/chips . In your previous comments you mentioned that you sell these boards to a refiner. Could you please post a payout/assay report. Or you can just dm me if you are not comfortable posting here. I can give you more insight into these boards if you are interested.

Regards,
Gaurav

 

[rickzeien]

"Roughly 300-350 milligram per kg"

Seems high. Can you confirm?

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

Yes I can confirm. We have been recycling the same material from last one year. About 300 tons till now. There is probably more gold in them. We haven't re run our slags till now. From one ton of such boards you will get anywhere 12 - 14kgs of ics and chips mixed. Ics covering 96 percent of the total weight. That's roughly 3.6 to 4 grams of gold and about 20 grams of silver just from these ics/chips . In your previous comments you mentioned that you sell these boards to a refiner. Could you please post a payout/assay report. Or you can just dm me if you are not comfortable posting here. I can give you more insight into these boards if you are interested.

Regards,
Gaurav

Thanks for the reply. I have not processed these boards before.

I see where I made my error. I had misread your post and thought the amount of gold was per kg of boards not per kg of SMD.

Rookie mistake on my part. Thanks for clearing that up.



Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

 

[Mano2876]

Hello
Tomorrow I will be processing 1kg of such a bga mix. What do you think the yield will be?
Of course, I will write how much gold I got
https://iv.pl/images/5ee0d523c41c64b78bc827e41a5864c3.jpg

 

[Rival metals]

This information you will not find anywhere else. This is great... thank you for the effort.
Terence

 

[patnor1011]

Hello
Tomorrow I will be processing 1kg of such a bga mix. What do you think the yield will be?
Of course, I will write how much gold I got
https://iv.pl/images/5ee0d523c41c64b78bc827e41a5864c3.jpg

That depends on what they come from. I have seen BGA with very little gold - I was told they came from TV's.
Generally, you should expect about 5g of gold from a kilo of them.

 

[Trinity358]

Dear Tzoax,
My mix Ic gold recovery is it perfect result?
Advice me please

Thanks.

https://youtu.be/E7IH5mR1VJ8