A systematic study on pyrolytic laser writing of gold from organic sol
utions of triphenylphosphine gold (1) complexes reveals that essential
ly structureless tracks of electrical resistivities between 9 and 22 m
uOMEGA . cm can be deposited at 3-50 mW power and writing speeds of th
e order of mm/s. It is shown that under optimized conditions laser dep
osition from solutions is a competitive method with economic writing s
peeds and material properties appropriate for practical applications.