Future Trends in Microelectronics

Part IIIMicroelectronics in Health, Energy Harvesting, and Communications

While the drivers of the “next economy” are a subject of debate, there is no doubt that microelectronics will continue to be a primary enabler. But to many, it is not as clear that the next major innovations will be enabled by the famed “roadmap” advances and breakthroughs in microelectronics or by creation of new transistors or even new semiconductors. It is not even certain that those major innovations will be in the realm of electronics. Instead, they could be in healthcare, or on and even in our body, or in distributed energy sources and manufacturing. It is just as interesting to raise the questions of what the impact will be if the semiconductor “roadmap” evolution truly comes to an end. Which industries would survive? Is there anything on the horizon that will take over the role of the current information economy? In this chapter, one may glimpse some signs of such future industries and innovations. One thing seems clearer than others: the continuation of the exponential progress in data transmission and storage calls for greater bandwidth, likely meaning photonics, as also highlighted here.

Contributors

1. 3.1 H. W. Hendriks, D. Mioni, W. Crooijmans, and H. van Houten
2. 3.2 A. Borton
3. 3.3 Romani, M. Dini, M. Filippi, M. Tartagni, and E. Sangiorgi
4. 3.4 Tao, G. Ardila, R. Hinchet, A. Michard, L. Montès, and M. Mouis
5. 3.5 Ledentsov Jr., V. A. Shchukin, N. N. Ledentsov, J.-R. Kropp, S. Burger, and F. Schmidt ...