Overview

Gold's unique properties make it useful in medical applications, pollution control, air bags, mobile telephones, laptop computers, space travel, and many other things we consider indispensable to today's society. Approximately 11% of demand for gold comes from industry.

Almost all electronic consumer items contain a small amount of gold, which is critical to the reliable and efficient functioning of the equipment. The chips and contacts found in a car's ABS system all contain gold, as does the electronics controlling the inflation of car airbags in the event of a crash.

Smoke detectors, routinely used in millions of households to protect against fire, contain a gold alloy placed between layers of another metal. Gold is used in brazing alloys used to join certain components in aero engines and in some medical implants gold is the metal of choice. It's fair to say that without the use of gold in all these products, they would be much less efficient and reliable than they are now.

A catalyst is a substance that is added to a chemical process to speed up the rate at which the process occurs. Metal catalysts are used extensively by industry to make chemical plants more efficient. For a number of years gold has been used as a catalyst in the large-scale production of vinyl acetate monomer (VAM).

This is an important industrial chemical used as a feedstock for paints and adhesives. There is now a growing excitement about the potential gold may hold for catalysing other important industrial reactions.   Gold is likely to be used more extensively like other precious metals (platinum group metals and silver) as a key catalyst in a range of industrial processes and uses.

Apart from the obvious use of gold alloys in dental restorations, there are also a number of direct applications of gold in medical devices. As with dental applications, these are related to the excellent biocompatibility of gold as a material. Applications include wires for pacemakers and gold plated stents used in the treatment of heart disease.

Furthermore, gold is one of the most effective conductors of electricity known to man, and its reliability compared with other metals such as palladium or copper is increased by the fact that gold is also an excellent conductor of heat. 

Gold is also inert and, therefore, does not react when it comes into contact with other substances.  In addition, gold does not corrode or tarnish, so it is much more reliable than other metals in electronic applications.

Through World Gold Council's GROW Programme, the world's leading gold mining companies are funding ground-breaking research that will lead to important new industrial and medical uses for gold. Many of these new applications are related to environmentally positive uses of gold eg pollution control catalysts and medical applications.