Hello everyone,
For a couple of months, I spend some time reading articles and passionate subjects on this forum, which I really love — time for me, now to ask for the first time some advice to the community. As a short intro, I'm Alan and I work in the advanced electronics industry in East Europe.
5 years ago, a friend enrolled in the electronic industry and give me a fairly great amount of NPN power transistors (3kg total). This kind of component has been massively used in the 90s in spatial applications in power amplifier architecture but are now obsolete because of the advent of III–V semiconductors like LDMOS, AsGa, or GaN-based PA offering better power and "cost" density.
The transistors I get are made of 2 plated flanges (base and emiter) mounted in a hermetic ceramic package (white ceramic, probably beryllium oxide BeO which looks like a danger to me). An interesting feature is that the datasheet mentioned an internal gold metalization. As the transistor is capable of driving a high amount of current, the internal wiring is excepted to be well established.
For that reason, I choose to open one and as expected, the bonding wires are well present in great quantity. Since I'm not familiar now, with chemical extraction, I choose to collect the gold of bonding wire by hand using an electronic microscope and scalpel with a mask and goggles just in case of hazardous dust. In 30 minutes using 6 units, I collected an amount of gold wire that I can't weigh at the moment as my electronic scale died.. I share a picture of the nude transistor and the wire collected I will appreciate having feedback on the potential of the yield of this. I'm wondering about the remaining quantity of gold present on the plating that of course, I can't extract with a scalpel...
Has anybody already processed and cooked that kind of transistor or have some feedback on the quantity (order of magnitude) of the gold present?
As a newbie, I want to collect the gold wire bonding "by hand" for the moment before starting anything related to the chemical process and try to form a button from that.
I'm wondering if someone can give me some advice on what kind of material/system to choose to melt gold and form buttons. My first guess would be to use an induction heater system, but is anybody has already tested that,
and is that adapted for my needs?
Have a great day
For a couple of months, I spend some time reading articles and passionate subjects on this forum, which I really love — time for me, now to ask for the first time some advice to the community. As a short intro, I'm Alan and I work in the advanced electronics industry in East Europe.
5 years ago, a friend enrolled in the electronic industry and give me a fairly great amount of NPN power transistors (3kg total). This kind of component has been massively used in the 90s in spatial applications in power amplifier architecture but are now obsolete because of the advent of III–V semiconductors like LDMOS, AsGa, or GaN-based PA offering better power and "cost" density.
The transistors I get are made of 2 plated flanges (base and emiter) mounted in a hermetic ceramic package (white ceramic, probably beryllium oxide BeO which looks like a danger to me). An interesting feature is that the datasheet mentioned an internal gold metalization. As the transistor is capable of driving a high amount of current, the internal wiring is excepted to be well established.
For that reason, I choose to open one and as expected, the bonding wires are well present in great quantity. Since I'm not familiar now, with chemical extraction, I choose to collect the gold of bonding wire by hand using an electronic microscope and scalpel with a mask and goggles just in case of hazardous dust. In 30 minutes using 6 units, I collected an amount of gold wire that I can't weigh at the moment as my electronic scale died.. I share a picture of the nude transistor and the wire collected I will appreciate having feedback on the potential of the yield of this. I'm wondering about the remaining quantity of gold present on the plating that of course, I can't extract with a scalpel...
Has anybody already processed and cooked that kind of transistor or have some feedback on the quantity (order of magnitude) of the gold present?
As a newbie, I want to collect the gold wire bonding "by hand" for the moment before starting anything related to the chemical process and try to form a button from that.
I'm wondering if someone can give me some advice on what kind of material/system to choose to melt gold and form buttons. My first guess would be to use an induction heater system, but is anybody has already tested that,
and is that adapted for my needs?
Have a great day