Future Trends in Microelectronics: From Nanophotonics to Sensors to Energy

Part IV

Sensors, Detectors, and Energy

4 Sensors, Detectors, and Energy

Continuing the central theme of focusing on future trends, the participants of this gathering and the contributors to this part of the book ventured beyond the current main path of the IT evolution - information processing and transmission – to the acquisition of information via sensing.

An inspiring Canadian effort on sensing at a very large scale – office buildings, hospitals, airports, shopping plazas, and over a full range of pollutants and gases – was presented and generated much enthusiasm. Another new topic in sensing was covered in a mini-symposium on recently-developed high-energy particle detectors. At the other end of the energy spectrum, we have continued the pursuit of very low energy infrared detection, this time featuring a proposed bolometric technology based on the VO₂ phase transition.

A strong advocacy was again made for large-area distributed electronics – macroelectronics, as well as for new energy sources.

Perhaps, in more ways than one, the emphasis on sensing signal the beginning of a paradigm shift in sensing and detection, long-advocated at the FTM meetings: real-time adaptive collection and read-out of spectral, spatial, directional, and substance-differentiated information.

Contributors

4.1   Zhong He

4.2   Serge Luryi and Arsen Subashiev

4.3   Arsen Subashiev and Serge Luryi

4.4   M. A. Alam, N. Pimparkar, and B. Ray

4.5   M. D’Iorio

4.6   A. Sergeev, V. Mitin, L. H. Chien, and ...