Word: silicones
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...billion U.S. production of integrated circuits, the hottest and most highly competitive field of advanced industrial technology. The worldwide semiconductor market is expected to soar to $100 billion annually by the end of the century. Moreover, the industry's key product, the confetti-size sliver of silicon known as the microchip, is revolutionizing everything from giant computers to tiny home appliances, making possible a whole new generation of low-cost machines that can "think" and "talk." Says Electronics Analyst Benjamin Rosen: "Within 20 years, microchips will be as economically important as autos, steel, energy and chemicals-a basic global...
...keep their industry forging ahead, Japanese semiconductor firms are investing heavily. Large and financially solid companies like Nippon Electric and Toshiba are already either taking over existing U.S. semiconductor firms or else setting up plants in the heart of the industry in Santa Clara County's "silicon valley," southeast of San Francisco. Japan's ten largest chip makers plan in 1980 to spend $610 million, vs. $476 million last year, to boost production. While American firms have shipped much of their semiconductor production to countries where labor is inexpensive and work can be done by hand, the Japanese...
...needs of the private sector. All kinds of subsidies are available, many of which are designed to promote industrial innovation. The Federal Ministry of Research and Technology, an agency not similarly represented in the U.S. cabinet, has a rapidly growing budget that has supported projects in fields like microelectronics, silicon chips, coal gasification, and may soon support steel modernization. Other subsidies have helped prevent the collapse of key companies or lagging sectors, but with more stringent government efforts to impose conditions and require the rationalization of the subsidized industry than would be true in America. It has been effective...
...M.I.T.'s Lincoln Laboratory, to gether with researchers elsewhere, has come to the rescue of the overtaxed satellite watchers. Using the latest in silicon-chip wizardry, it is setting up a worldwide network of monitoring stations that should vastly expand NORAD's ability to keep tabs on orbiting objects...
Ovshinsky also has been working on new materials that could replace, among other things, the silicon cells used to generate solar power, the electronic chips in computer and calculator memories and the light-sensitive chemicals in camera film. If looked at under a powerful microscope, a silicon crystal shows perfectly arranged patterns of atoms. Ovshinsky is working with "ovonic" materials that have disordered or amorphous atoms. He claims that if perfected, these substitute materials could serve just as well and would be much cheaper to make...