Integrated Products Manufacturing : Technology watch : Technology reviews : Technology Reviews

Technology Watch's technology reviews do not deal narrowly with technologies. Some of the reviews you will find in this section do have titles referring directly to technologies (e.g. Polymer Electronics, An Introduction to MEMS, Moulded Interconnect Devices), but they do more than summarize the functions, applications and underlying physical principles of the technology. The ideal for which we aim in each case is a review that draws together engineering and scientific aspects of the technology like these, on the one hand, with other issues bearing on the technology's future in the design and manufacture of products integrating mechanical and electronic technologies on the other. Conspicuous among these are regulatory, economic, managerial and industrial issues. Technology Watch, however, recognizes no a priori limit to the range of issues that may be material, so that reviews will touch on matters social, demographic, psychological, aesthetic - wherever our authors deem them important.

A tiny revolution?

Upwards of forty years' research has already laid some of the necessary foundations for the commercial implementation of nanotechnology and every major research facility can offer some kind of technological showpiece in this area. Already products are available, the very existence of which depend on an advanced understanding of the behaviour of materials and processes at the molecular level, where things often behave very differently from how they operate at the more familiar macroscopic level of processing. read more...

Conducting polymers

Once upon a time, a degree of conductivitiy could be conferred on polymers but only through incorporation of a conductive additive - usually carbon, nickel or silver. This changed in 1977 with the discovery of inherently conductive polymers (ICPs). These polymers are not yet easy to process and reliability is difficult to engineer in ICP devices. Nevertheless, they are already being used and experimented with in applications as diverse as flexible, portable displays and rechargeable batteries. read more...