Functional Materials and Information

Exploiting the semiconductor properties of a particular material - single crystal silicon - lies at the heart of developments in the electronics and computer industry. This industry has a turnover of some thousand milliard francs at the end of the 1980s, a figure expected to increase five-fold by the end of the century. Through the scale of its induced technological developments, the size of the markets involved and the considerable social implications, no material better illustrates the strategic role of a functional material than silicon.