In spite of periodical slumps, the market for microelectronics and information and communication technologies continues unabated at a high level of dynamism. Its cycles of innovation are faster than in other sectors. Innovations can follow evolutionary rules with amazing precision (such as Moore’s Law in microelectronics), although there are also dramatic revolutionary developments such as with LED or polymer electronics. The brevity of these cycles of innovation is also reflected in the above-average expenditures for research & development.

The source of part of the growth in the microelectronics and the information and communication sector is the fact that it stakes out new areas of application with astonishing regularity. Some prime examples are mobile internet, »lifetronics« with new applications in biology and medicine or mechatronics in automotive, machine tooling and plant engineering.

The hallmark of the materials used in microelectronics and information and communication technology is performance requirements (such as attenuation with glass-fiber cables or defect density in silicon single crystals) that would have been thought impossible just a couple of decades ago. On the other hand, these materials create very high added value in the systems they are used in.