More Than Jewellery and Bars
When most people think of gold, they picture rings, necklaces or stacks of bullion in a vault. But gold's most remarkable qualities have nothing to do with how it looks. It is the most ductile metal on earth, the best conductor of electricity that does not corrode, and one of the most biocompatible materials known to medicine. These properties make gold indispensable in industries that most people never associate with precious metals.
Marcus Briggs, Non-Executive Director at Icon Gold, often finds himself explaining this to people outside the industry. "Gold is not just a store of value. It is a working material. Satellites, surgical instruments, microchips - they all depend on gold. Remove it from the supply chain and entire industries stop functioning."
Every Device You Own
Gold's unmatched conductivity and resistance to corrosion make it essential in circuit boards, connectors and microchips. Every smartphone, laptop, tablet and gaming console contains small quantities of gold in its internal wiring. The connections need to be reliable for years without degrading, and no other metal performs as consistently at this scale.
Protecting Spacecraft
NASA coats astronaut visors with a thin layer of gold to filter harmful solar radiation. Spacecraft use gold-plated thermal blankets to regulate temperature in the extreme conditions of space. The James Webb Space Telescope's primary mirrors are coated in gold because it reflects infrared light more effectively than any alternative.
Inside the Human Body
Gold nanoparticles are used in targeted cancer treatments, delivering drugs directly to tumour cells while leaving healthy tissue unharmed. Gold compounds treat rheumatoid arthritis. Gold-coated stents keep arteries open after heart procedures. The metal's biocompatibility means the human body rarely rejects it.
The Original Dental Material
Gold has been used in dentistry for over 4,000 years. Modern dental gold alloys are used for crowns, bridges and inlays because gold does not react with saliva or food acids, lasts decades without degrading, and can be shaped with extraordinary precision. No synthetic material has matched its longevity in the mouth.
Buildings That Shine
Gold leaf has adorned buildings for millennia, from ancient temples to modern skyscrapers. But functional gold glass is the modern application. Thin gold coatings on windows reflect infrared radiation, keeping buildings cool in summer and warm in winter. The Royal Bank Plaza in Toronto uses 71 kilograms of gold in its window glass.
Under the Bonnet
Gold is used in airbag deployment systems because the electrical contacts must fire reliably in a fraction of a second with zero margin for failure. Gold-coated sensors monitor engine emissions. Formula One cars use gold heat shielding to protect critical components from extreme engine temperatures.
"People are surprised when I tell them there is gold in their phone, their car and possibly in their body. Gold is not a luxury. It is an engineering material that happens to also be beautiful." — Marcus Briggs
Why Nothing Replaces Gold
Scientists and engineers have spent decades trying to find cheaper alternatives to gold in industrial applications. In some cases, copper or silver can substitute. But for applications where reliability is non-negotiable, where corrosion would be catastrophic, or where the material must function inside a human body, gold remains irreplaceable.
A single gram of gold can be beaten into a sheet covering one square metre, or drawn into a wire over three kilometres long. No other metal combines this level of malleability with complete resistance to tarnish and corrosion. These are not qualities that can be engineered into cheaper materials.
The Space Connection
Gold's role in space exploration continues to expand. Beyond coatings and thermal management, gold is used in the electrical connectors of every satellite in orbit. When a component must function reliably for fifteen years in the vacuum of space with no possibility of repair, engineers specify gold because nothing else offers the same guarantee.
The growing commercial space industry, with thousands of new satellites planned for communication, observation and navigation, will increase industrial gold demand significantly. Each satellite uses small quantities, but the cumulative effect of thousands of launches per year adds meaningful volume to global gold consumption.
E-Waste and the Urban Mine
The gold in electronics creates an interesting secondary market. A tonne of mobile phone circuit boards contains roughly 300 grams of gold, significantly more per tonne than most gold ore deposits. This has given rise to the concept of urban mining, where old electronics are processed to recover their precious metal content.
As electronics become more prevalent and gold prices rise, urban mining becomes increasingly viable. Specialist recyclers can now extract gold from circuit boards with over 95% efficiency using chemical processes that are far less destructive than traditional mining. The gold recovered is refined to the same purity as newly mined metal.
Marcus Briggs connects this to the broader industry picture. "Industrial gold use creates a cycle. Gold goes into phones and computers, those devices eventually reach end of life, and the gold comes back into the supply chain through recycling. It is one of the few metals where almost nothing is ever truly lost."
Growing Demand
Industrial gold demand is rising as technology becomes more sophisticated and more widespread. The expansion of electric vehicles, renewable energy systems, advanced medical devices and space infrastructure all require gold in small but critical quantities. None of these sectors are shrinking.
This creates a floor under gold demand that exists independently of jewellery trends or financial speculation. Even if nobody bought another gold ring or another gold bar, the technology sector alone would consume hundreds of tonnes per year. That structural demand is one of the reasons gold maintains its value over centuries while other commodities fluctuate wildly.
As Marcus Briggs observes: "Gold is the only material that works as well in a wedding ring as it does in a spacecraft. That versatility is what makes it irreplaceable, and that is what underpins its value."