Silver Facts

Silver Facts: Silver in the Home

Every time you turn on a microwave oven, dishwasher, clothes washer, or television set, the action activates a switch with silver contacts that completes the required electrical circuit.

Ordinary household switches, which normally carry high electric current for electrical appliances from irons to refrigerators, use silver. Silver is the metal of choice for switch contacts because it does not corrode, which would result in overheating, posting a fire hazard.

Today's electrical appliances are controlled by membrane switch panels, where the contacts are silver. Membrane switch panels are found in microwave ovens, automobiles and under the keys of personal computers. Due to their reliability and wide use, the silver-contact membrane switch market in the U.S. has grown to over $40 million annually. In an increasing trend, millions of on-the-counter and under-the-counter water purifiers are sold each year in the United States to rid drinking water of bacteria, chlorine, trihalomethanes, lead, particulates, and odor. Here silver is used to prevent the buildup of bacteria and algae in the filters. Research has shown that the catalytic action of silver, in concert with oxygen, provides a powerful sanitizer, that virtually eliminates the need for the use of corrosive chlorine.

126 million troy ounces of silver were used worldwide in 2007 for photography. Although a wide variety of technology is available, silver-based photography is expected to dominate the market for the foreseeable future due to its superior definition and low cost. Silver halide is the material that records what is to be seen in the photograph. As little as 4 photons of light activate silver halides which amplify that incident light by a factor of one billion times. In today's photography, silver halides are coupled with dyes that bring the color of the world around us into a permanent record.

Everyone is accustomed to silvered mirrors. What is new is invisible silver, a transparent coating of silver on double pane thermal windows. This coating not only rejects the hot summer sun, but also reflects internal house heat inward. A new double layer of silver on glass marketed as "low E squared" is sweeping the window market as it reflects away almost 95% of the hot rays of the sun, creating a new level of household energy savings.

Sterling silver has always been traditional tableware because of its sparkling reflectivity, its artistic heritage, and its bactericidal properties. Similarly, silver jewelry owes its long popularity to its reflective beauty and it workability into creative shapes. Worldwide use of silver for these markets amounts to over 163 million troy ounces in 2007.

Watches, clocks, and calculators today are battery driven; for these, the silver battery is the power source of choice. The silver battery provides the higher voltages and long life required for quartz watches. In fact, over 1.5 billion silver oxide-zinc batteries are supplied to world markets yearly, including miniature-sized batteries for watches, cameras and small electronic devices, and larger batteries for tools and commercial portable TV cameras.

Samsung has integrated its Nano Silver Health System to refrigerators where it is used in trays, filters and tubing to kill bacteria and the odors they produce, and in air conditioners, where it is used in surfaces that touch water from condensation. The Silver Nano Health System relies on the dispersal of a colloidal silver solution of sub-microscopic (1~100nano meter) size that can easily penetrate cell walls. When these silver nano particles come into contact with bacteria and viruses they disrupt their structure and inhibit cell growth.

As part of its own growing interest in silver in appliances, Samsung's competitor LG Electronics has introduced to the Middle East market its 'TV refrigerator,' which allows people to enjoy music, movies, satellite broadcasting and cable TV in the kitchen, through a small TV placed on the appliance door, according to K.H. Kim, President of LG Electronics Middle East and Africa. "Users also have the option to order food and groceries from home shopping channels," he added. Equipped with a multi-aperture flow cooling system, which stops heat from the TV from reaching the refrigerator, the unit uses 'Bio Silver' and 'Bio Shield,' LG's brand of nano silver technology to provide anti-bacterial protection.