Skip to content
Material World
Element · Ag

Silver

The best electrical conductor of any element, used for almost everything except conducting electricity.

Electrical conductor Currency metal

Silver conducts electricity and heat better than any other element, and reflects visible light better than any other metal. It is not used for wiring because copper is nearly as good and vastly cheaper — a rare case where the best material is well understood and deliberately not chosen.

Where it is used, the reason is usually specific: silver contacts in switches that must not weld shut, silver paste in solar cell electrodes, and silver's antimicrobial action in wound dressings.

History

Silver was money for most of recorded history, and the flow of American silver into Europe and onward to China from the sixteenth century restructured the world's economies. Several languages still use the same word for silver and for money.

Uses

Silver's industrial use has overtaken its ornamental one. It is the best electrical and thermal conductor of any element, so silver paste forms the contact grid on almost every silicon solar cell, and silver contacts and brazing alloys are used where reliability outweighs cost.

Its antimicrobial action puts it in wound dressings and coatings. Photographic use, once dominant, has collapsed with film. Jewellery, silverware and investment still account for a substantial share of demand.

Medium confidence Weak evidence

How we know: checked recently · only one source, so there is nothing to cross-check it against · stated directly by the source.

How this connects

Where a connection has been confirmed by an outside reference, that reference is named beside it.

is used as

  • Catalysis — application · in ethylene oxide production
  • Photovoltaics — application · as the paste forming the contact grid on a silicon cell
  • Tableware and vessels — application · chosen historically for status and incidentally antimicrobial, and abandoned because it tarnishes
  • Jewellery and adornment — application · the affordable noble metal, and the one that tarnishes, which is the whole of the trade-off

is an alternative to

  • Copper — element · better conductor, roughly two orders of magnitude more expensive
  • Cupronickel — alloy · in coinage, which is what replaced silver in circulating money almost everywhere in the twentieth century

is produced by

  • Cyanidation — process · commonly recovered alongside gold from the same solution
  • Electrorefining — process · recovered from anode slimes alongside the gold

is extracted from

  • Galena — mineral · as a by-product, recovered from the lead after smelting
  • Acanthite — mineral · the principal ore where silver is mined for its own sake rather than as a by-product Wikidata

is sourced from

  • Lead — element · most silver reaches the market as a by-product of lead mining rather than from silver mines, recovered from the refinery's residues
  • Zinc — element · with lead, from the same polymetallic ores — sphalerite and galena carry silver together
  • Copper — element · from the anode slimes of copper electrorefining, the same stream the platinum group and the tellurium come out of

is a component of

  • Solder — alloy · 0–4% · a few per cent in the lead-free alloys, which measurably raised world silver demand when the transition happened
  • Amalgam — alloy · 20–35% · the main component of the dental powder, and what makes the set filling strong
  • Electrum — alloy · 20–80% · the balance, which pales the colour and hardens the metal

is found in

  • Sterling silver — alloy · 92.5% · 92.5 per cent, fixed by statute since the twelfth century
  • Acanthite — mineral Wikidata

is associated with

  • The wartime materials programmes — event · borrowed from the United States Treasury for electromagnetic separation windings, because copper was scarce and silver was not being used

is produced at

  • Potosí — place · from 1545, by amalgamation with mercury after 1554, at a scale that moved prices across Europe and Asia

is used in

  • Solar panel — object · the screen-printed grid that carries current off the cell face, and photovoltaics now take something like a sixth of world silver production

Sources

  • Material World
    Our own writing
  • Wikidata
    Wikimedia Foundation · Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal (public domain dedication)
  • PubChem
    US National Library of Medicine · Mixed — aggregated third-party content, rights retained by depositors
  • NIST — National Institute of Standards and Technology
    United States Department of Commerce · US Government work — public information, credit requested

Questions this page answers

Where it comes from, and what it becomes

Follow Silver back to what it starts as, and forward into what it becomes. Each step is a documented one — a real route material takes, not a chain of inference.

Upstream — what it comes from

  • Silver → is sourced from (from the anode slimes of copper electrorefining, the same stream the platinum group and the tellurium come out of) → Copper → is produced by (as blister copper, refined electrolytically afterwards) → Smelting → takes as input (as the element removed, not added) → Oxygen → is produced by (the largest output by tonnage, and the reason air separation units sit beside steelworks) → Air separation → takes as input (the feedstock, and an unusual one in being free, unlimited and available anywhere — the cost is entirely the energy to liquefy it) → Air
  • Silver → is produced by (recovered from anode slimes alongside the gold) → Electrorefining → takes as input (as impure smelted anodes, around 99% copper, which is not pure enough for wire) → Copper → is produced by (as blister copper, refined electrolytically afterwards) → Smelting → takes as input (as the element removed, not added) → Oxygen → is produced by (the largest output by tonnage, and the reason air separation units sit beside steelworks) → Air separation
  • Silver → is sourced from (with lead, from the same polymetallic ores — sphalerite and galena carry silver together) → Zinc → is produced by (as the oxide, which is then reduced — roasting is the step that makes zinc sulfide smeltable) → Roasting → takes as input (a copper sulfide; roasting drives off the sulfur that would otherwise prevent reduction) → Chalcopyrite
  • Silver → is sourced from (most silver reaches the market as a by-product of lead mining rather than from silver mines, recovered from the refinery's residues) → Lead → is produced by (as the oxide, from galena, by the same route) → Roasting → takes as input (a copper sulfide; roasting drives off the sulfur that would otherwise prevent reduction) → Chalcopyrite
  • Silver → is produced by (commonly recovered alongside gold from the same solution) → Cyanidation → takes as input (as the leach solution: the cyanide is a few hundred parts per million and the rest is water) → Water → is sourced from (by desalination, where energy is cheap and coastline available — the only route that adds fresh water rather than moving it) → Seawater
  • Silver → is extracted from (as a by-product, recovered from the lead after smelting) → Galena

These are the most distinct paths back. Silver can be traced through others besides.

Downstream — what it becomes

  • Silver → is a component of (a few per cent in the lead-free alloys, which measurably raised world silver demand when the transition happened) → Solder → is used in (every joint on it, and tin-silver-copper since RoHS pushed the lead out from 2006) → Printed circuit board → is used in (and it is the change that made electronics manufacturable: assembly stopped being a wiring job and became a printing one) → Electronics manufacture → is associated with (and the supply chain it produced is the deepest and most concentrated in the world economy) → The semiconductor era complete chain
  • Silver → is associated with (borrowed from the United States Treasury for electromagnetic separation windings, because copper was scarce and silver was not being used) → The wartime materials programmes complete chain
  • Silver → is used in (the screen-printed grid that carries current off the cell face, and photovoltaics now take something like a sixth of world silver production) → Solar panel → is used as (and the price fell roughly ninety-nine per cent in thirty years on thinner wafers, finer saws and rising cell efficiency) → Photovoltaics
  • Silver → is used as (in ethylene oxide production) → Catalysis
  • Silver → is used as (as the paste forming the contact grid on a silicon cell) → Photovoltaics
  • Silver → is a component of (the main component of the dental powder, and what makes the set filling strong) → Amalgam

These are the most distinct paths onward. Silver ends up in others besides.