Abstract
The modern world relies on electronic technologies that have evolved rapidly over the last 50 years. Indeed today’s pervasive communications, information technology and consumer culture depend on low cost, high performance semiconductor electronic devices that
provide very high levels of integration and functionality, whilst operating reliably at very high speeds.
This address will explore the origins of electronic technologies and their evolution, together
with their role in ground-breaking events, such as the moon landing, the implementation of the internet, mobile communications, digital media, and computing. Insight will be given into the development of revolutionary semiconductor devices whose critical dimensions shrank
in size from millimetres down to nanometres and whose operating speed multiplied by a factor of over 1 million.
The economic implications of manufacturing and supplying electronic devices, and their environmental cost, will be discussed together with expectations of how this might change for future technology developments.
Current research and the prospects that nanotechnology and plastic electronics offer for the future of electronics will be highlighted in the presentation, together with socio-economic implications for green technologies and wider roles in medicine, healthcare and smart
environmental applications.
