Organized media future research

A second initiative, AixCAPE, was founded in 2002 as a consortium of industrial end users of CAPE software. The major objective of this organization is transfer-oriented research and development in close cooperation with its industrial members. Transfer is organized in a variety of cooperation opportunities, ranging from short-term consulting services to joint medium-term research projects or a long-term membership in the consortium. Initially, the research results of the Lehrstuhl fiir Prozesstechnik form the basis of Aix-CAPE s activities. In the future, other academic collaborators are aimed to be included. The idea is to achieve open technical platforms in which results from various research organizations can be integrated for efficient assessment and use. 

Very similar views have been expressed by Fletcher " whose experience both in the research field and on the applied front again renders him qualified to speak. He believes that one might look in the future to the existence of a modest spectrum of medium-scale (50-100 tonne p.a.) electro-organic industrial processes, quite possible with a turnover, one process/product being abandoned, to be replaced by another for purely commercial reasons. Like Beck, Fletcher believes that in a straight competition, gas-phase hydrogenations with their inherent simplicity will almost always be more cost-effective. 

As the final topic of this chapter, the future-oriented approach of mechanically controlled DDS and sensing using molecular machines is presented. Molecular machines are certain kinds of state-of-the-art objects in current organic chemistry, supramolecular chemistry, and nanotechnology. A single molecule and/or a complex formed with a couple of molecules work as a machine in ultrasmall dimensions. However, most research efforts on molecular machines stay within the fine science level, and practical uses of molecular machines are still at the dream level. If we can control functions of molecular machines by conventional mechanical actions such as hand motions, it would open the way to common uses of molecular machines in daily life. In order to realize mechanical control of molecular machines, it would be required to couple two kinds of motions over very different length scales, that is, mechanical motions in meter or centimeter size and molecular motions in nanometer scale have to be combined. It can be rationally done if we use a two-dimensional medium where in-plane directions possess macroscopically visible dimensions and their thicknesses are maintained in the nanometer region [22]. Manual control of molecular machines can be accomplished at dynamic two-dimensional media. 

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