Sol-gel science and technology: Current state and future prospects

This paper addresses the current state and future prospects of sol-gel processing. It summarizes responses to a questionnaire received from more than four dozen leaders of the sol-gel community. Overall, the respondents remain quite sanguine about the future prospects for the field, and with numerous areas where sol-gel processing can provide unique capabilities and novel materials. The present authors acknowledge this potential, but argue that its achievement will depend upon greatly increased involvement of the sol-gel community with applications, and carrying out a much larger fraction of sol-gel research in the context of applications.