High-technology industries

Development of new applications of radiation modifications of the properties of polymers in high technology industries such as electronics and the exposure of polymer materials to radiation environments as diverse as medical sterilization and the Van Allen belts of space have resulted in a renewed interest in fundamental radiation chemistry of polymers. 

Recently there has been increasing interest in studies of the effects of high energy radiation on polymers. Some of this interest has arisen because of the use of polymers as resists in the microchip industry, and some through the search for radiation resistant polymers for the aerospace and other high technology industries. 

Fourth, the chemical engineer will be squarely in the middle of developments in many of the high-technology industries. We must transcend the image of the chemical engineer as the guy in the hard hat standing on the catwalk of a refinery surveying his world-scale plant. 

This chapter is concerned with dyes and pigments which are complexes of azo, formazan, azomethine, nitroso, anthraquinone and phthalocyanine ligands. Many of these compounds find important applications in other fields, particularly colour photography and reprography, analysis, catalysis, biology, and some modem high technology industries such as electronics. These applications are described in other chapters of this volume. 

Over the last three decades, many of these high-technology industries have evolved from mechanical-based manufacturing to chemical-based manufacturing. Examples include home entertainment, data storage and manipulation (computation), high-performance structural materials, and... 

Four major differences mark the two sets of high-technology industries. The first and most obvious is the historical timing of the creation of the initial infrastructures—that is, the building of the technological and institutional foundations of the respective industries. In consumer electronics and computers, the creation of the infrastructure began in the 1950s, thirty years af-... 

The concepts presented in Chapter 1 of Inventing the Electronic Century provide the conceptual framework for understanding the evolution of high-technology industries worldwide. 

Second, high-technology industries form over a period of decades in which they establish their infrastructures. The first movers and their close... 

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