Functional Other Imaging Technologies

A useful classification of sensitizing dyes is the one adopted to describe patents in image technology. In Table 1, the Image Technology Patent Information System (ITPAIS), dye classes and representative patent citations from the ITPAIS file are Hsted as a function of significant dye class. From these citations it is clear that preferred sensitizers for silver haUdes are polymethine dyes (cyanine, merocyanine, etc), whereas other semiconductors have more evenly distributed citations. Zinc oxide, for example, is frequendy sensitized by xanthene dyes (qv) or triarylmethane dyes (see Triphenylmethane and related dyes) as well as cyanines and merocyanines (see Cyanine dyes). 

Polymer degradation, which reflects changes in the properties of polymers due to chemical processes that occur as a function of a complex set of environmental conditions, is a challenging topic of great fundamental and technological importance. Historically, materials were used long before their properties were fully understood. In recent years, analytical tools such as microscopy, imaging, and computational techniques have made possible the determination of structural and functional details of materials, some of which are hard to obtain by other methods. 

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