[Amps] Silver oxide is an insulator

[Tom McDermott]

Wow, the story of silver oxide and silver sulfide being good conductors
sure goes around a lot.  Only thing is that it's totally, completely wrong.

Resistivity of silver and related compounds:

Silver - 0.000000016 ohm-meter
Silver Sulfide 0.0015 ohm-meter
Silver Oxide 1000000000 ohm-meter

Copper - 0.000000017 ohm-meter.

Silver sulfide is a very poor conductor, silver oxide is an insulator.

Of course, the fact that a conductor is surrounded by an insulator
has no degrading effect on it's RF performance. You can surround it by
air (a very good insulator) or with plastic (another good insulator) and the
RF conductivity of what lies underneath is still good.

Silver plating of HF components serves only one purpose: to make it look
nice. If it's tarnished it still works fine.

    -- Tom, N5EG


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