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26 results for “nanogold applications”
Science · 8 August 2026
The Metal That Went Medical
…iol surface chemistry make it unusually easy to attach biological molecules to. · Medical nanogold consumes a trivial share of global supply — the value is in the surface chemistry, not the mass of metal. · Manufacturing a usable nanogold reagent means controlling a size distribu…
Amara Okonjo · 19 min read
Industry · 4 August 2026
The Gold Inside Your Phone
…st but structurally durable slice of annual gold demand. · Aerospace, medical and defence applications are the least price-sensitive gold demand anywhere, protected by requalification costs far larger than any metal saving. · How much gold is in a smartphone? Roughly 0.2 to 0.35…
Tomas Herrera · 18 min read
Industry · 7 August 2026
After the Cyanide
…blic purse decades later. · Cyanide-free leaching chemistries exist and are used in niche applications, but none yet match cyanide's combination of selectivity, cost and scale across the range of ore types the industry processes. · Why is cyanide used to extract gold? Because gol…
Tomas Herrera · 16 min read
Industry · 2 July 2026
Nine Nines: Inside a Modern Gold Refinery
…Some refiners produce 999.99, or 'five nines', for specialist electronics and scientific applications. · Why does the Miller process stop at about 99.5 per cent? Chlorination removes base metals and most silver efficiently, but the remaining platinum-group elements and residual…
Tomas Herrera · 19 min read
Industry · 20 August 2026
The Refiner's Ledger
…h of the Asian retail and jewellery market, or for specialised industrial and electronics applications — refiners turn to Wohlwill electrolysis, a slower and more capital-intensive process in which impure gold is dissolved as an anode in an electrolytic cell and re-deposited as p…
Tomas Herrera · 17 min read
Industry · 28 July 2026
Urban Mining: The Richest Gold Ore on Earth Is in Your Old Phone
…nner, and substitution to palladium-coated copper wire in packaging has removed gold from applications that once consumed it steadily. · But recovery does not scale with content alone. Thinner deposits inside more tightly integrated, adhesive-bonded, multi-layer assemblies are ha…
Tomas Herrera · 16 min read
Markets · 20 June 2026
Bring It Home: Central Banks and the Great Gold Repatriation
For half a century it was rational to store your gold in someone else's basement. Then the calculus of counterparty risk changed, and reserve managers started chartering aircraft. · Overseas custody w…
Ingrid Sørensen · 14 min read
Mining · 5 August 2026
Grade, Cut-off and the Arithmetic of an Open Pit
A gold mine is not a hole with gold in it. It is a spreadsheet with a hole attached — and the single number that decides which rock is ore and which rock is waste moves every time the price does. · Mo…
Amara Okonjo · 20 min read
Craft · 22 July 2026
Hallmarks and Assay: How Anyone Proves Gold Is Gold
A hallmark is one of the oldest consumer protection technologies in continuous use. It is also, on close inspection, a small masterpiece of institutional design — and it is being quietly eroded. · A h…
Yusuf Demir · 15 min read
Industry · 7 August 2026
How Fake Gold Is Detected
Counterfeiting gold is not about making something that looks right. It is about defeating a specific test, and the industry's defences are an escalating conversation between forgers and instruments. ·…
Tomas Herrera · 16 min read
Markets · 8 August 2026
Moving Bullion: The Logistics Nobody Prices
Between the vault and the buyer sits an industry of armoured vehicles, sealed cargo, bonded warehouses and insurance clauses. It rarely makes news, and it is the reason a spot price in London can dive…
Ingrid Sørensen · 15 min read
Mining · 19 August 2026
Nine Grams a Tonne
What does it actually cost to pull an ounce of gold out of the ground? The honest answer runs through grade decline, energy and water bills, permitting delays and the closure liabilities nobody prices…
Amara Okonjo · 18 min read
Markets · 17 August 2026
Paper Gold: What You Own When You Do Not Own Bars
Most of the world's gold exposure is a contract, not a metal. Futures, unallocated accounts and exchange-traded funds each promise gold in a different way — and the differences only become visible whe…
Ingrid Sørensen · 23 min read
Craft · 5 June 2026
The Alchemy of Craft: What Goldsmiths Know That Machines Don't
Gold's working properties are so extreme they border on the absurd — one gram drawn into three kilometres of wire. Inside a trade where the tools have barely changed and the hands are irreplaceable. ·…
Yusuf Demir · 16 min read
History · 14 July 2026
The Gold Standard: How a Soft Yellow Metal Became Money
For roughly five thousand years, humanity kept returning to the same element to settle its debts. The story is less about greed than about the unusually boring chemistry of atomic number 79. · Gold's…
Marguerite Adler · 14 min read
History · 9 August 2026
The Hoard Problem: What Buried Gold Actually Tells Us
A field of gold torcs and coins is a spectacular find and a treacherous document. The people who buried it were not writing to us, and the reasons they had for putting it in the ground are exactly wha…
Marguerite Adler · 16 min read
Markets · 11 September 2026
The Last Audit: What We Actually Know About the World's Official Gold
Governments report holding roughly 36,000 tonnes of gold — a figure quoted everywhere and verified almost nowhere. Between the published number and the physical bar sits a chain of certificates, custo…
Ingrid Sørensen · 22 min read
Science · 9 August 2026
The Metallurgy of Karat
Pure gold is too soft to hold a stone, too soft to hold an edge, and the wrong colour for half the world's taste. Almost everything you own that is gold is a designed alloy — and the design is where t…
Tomas Herrera · 17 min read
Mining · 22 May 2026
The Other Supply Chain: Artisanal Mining and the Mercury Problem
A significant share of the world's gold is produced by people working with hand tools, informal finance and a neurotoxin. Formalisation is the stated solution. Nobody agrees on what it costs. · Artisa…
Amara Okonjo · 15 min read
Markets · 8 September 2026
The Real-Rate Trade: Why Gold Moves When Bond Yields Do
For two decades the gold price could be read off an inflation-linked bond screen. Then, somewhere after 2022, the relationship stopped behaving — and the argument about why has become the most consequ…
Ingrid Sørensen · 25 min read
Industry · 6 August 2026
The Scrap Trade
Roughly a quarter of the world's annual gold supply has been gold before. It arrives as broken chains, single earrings and dental crowns, and it moves through a chain of intermediaries that most selle…
Ingrid Sørensen · 16 min read
Markets · 18 August 2026
The Vault Beneath the City
Beneath the Bank of England and beneath lower Manhattan sit two of the largest concentrations of monetary gold on earth, moved between anonymous compartments by a handful of porters who never touch th…
Ingrid Sørensen · 22 min read
Craft · 3 August 2026
The Wedding-Season Bid: How Jewellery Demand Sets the Floor
Half the world's gold is worn, not stored. In India and China that distinction barely exists — and the buying behaviour it produces is the most reliably contrarian force in the entire market. · Jewell…
Yusuf Demir · 15 min read
Science · 10 August 2026
Where Gold Actually Comes From
Every gram of gold on Earth was manufactured in an astrophysical catastrophe, arrived here after the planet had already formed, and was then concentrated by hot water. Three separate accidents, none o…
Tomas Herrera · 17 min read
Markets · 2 August 2026
Who Actually Sets the Gold Price
There is no single gold price. There is a London settlement number, a New York futures curve, a Shanghai premium and a jeweller's counter in Dubai — and the distance between them is where the market l…
Ingrid Sørensen · 16 min read
Markets · 6 August 2026
Why Central Banks Started Buying Gold Again
For three decades official institutions were net sellers of bullion, and the policy consensus treated the metal as a museum piece. Then, quietly, the world's reserve managers reversed. The reasons are…
Ingrid Sørensen · 14 min read
