Silicon future research

Ecotoxicological effects have been demonstrated for a number of surfactants or their metabolites, including some still currently in use, such as the nonylphenol ethoxylates [1], and as such there is a necessity to find more environmentally acceptable alternatives. Whilst the silicones are not the major surfactant type in use to date, the efficient properties and indications of low environmental persistence and toxicity demonstrate their potential for widespread use [2-4]. Relatively little is known about these new, rapidly emerging surfactants and the purpose of this chapter is thus to collate the available data, present new data, and identify the future research required in this area in order to evaluate the environmental relevance of this class of surfactants. 

On the basis of the results described here, extension of these syntheses to higher generations, as well as work aimed at more detailed studies with respect to the electrochemical properties and valuable applications of these silicon-based ferro-cenyl dendrimers, clearly represent interesting areas of future research. 

It is reasonable to use the potential of the presented combinations of methods for future research on copolymers, blends, and silicon polymers of different architectures. The direct linking of separation, identification, and characterization is a great advantage. 

The rapidly developing field of porous silicon-based biosensors that utilize optical transduction is comprehensively reviewed by distinguishing the differing strategies for small- and moderate-size biomolecular analytes and the challenges with analysis of complex biofluids. A number of topics are identified for future research that should lead to one-shot disposable chip-based systems becoming commercially avialable. 

It should be very evident from the above survey that the field of organosilicon chemistry, and in particular the photochemistry of organosilicon compounds, is a very active area of research. The field is of increasing interest not only to chemists whose primary interest lies with the silicon aspect of the subject, but increasingly it is also of interest to organic chemists because of the synthetically novel and useful products of photolysis which can be obtained, and to photochemists where the field presents a wealth of different types of reaction, few of which have been studied mechanistically. It seems certain that there will continue to be great activity in the field of organosilicon chemistry in the near future. 

Several of the originally planned chapters, on comparison of silicon compounds with their higher group 14 congeners, interplay between theory and experiment in organisilicon chemistry, silyl radicals, recent advances in the chemistry of silicon-phosphorous,-arsenic,-antimony and -bismuth compounds, and the chemistry of poly silanes, regrettably did not materialize. We hope to include these important chapters in a future complementary volume. The current pace of research in silicon chemistry will certainly soon require the publication of an additional updated volume. 

The sole example of a silicon-platinum cluster is the compound in entry 24 its structure has been noted in Section IV,A. It seems very likely that many further cluster systems await discovery, particularly with iridium, platinum, and gold, and that this represents an important future area of research. One obvious application is as precursors to metal silicides with high metal silicon ratios using c.v.d. techniques (compare Section V,A). 

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