Gold combination of high conductivity and resistance to corrosion has made the precious metal popular in electronic manufacturing process. The main use of gold in electronics has been with the plating of contacts in switches, relays, and connectors. Another of gold’s uses has been in electrical wiring for high-energy applications, but this is rare.
Gold is found in cell phones, calculators, PDAs, and GPS devices today. These gadgets are very common technologies used by people around the world. It is not hard for the contact points of these kinds of devices to get corroded. When tarnish or corrosion occurs, the low voltages and currents used in cell phones and PDA is broken up. Gold efficiently carries the current to these electronics and isn’t subject to the same corrosive wear other metals are.
About 50 cents of gold is used in each cell phone produced today. More often than not, that gold is not recovered from discarded cell phones. With an estimated one billion cell phones manufactured every year that is a large amount of gold that is being wasted. While we have been able with new technology to make gold thinner than ever, the increased number of new technologies has meant that our consumption of gold in electronics has not decreased.
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