4. Conclusion

Thin films are everywhere. Without them, there would of course be no monolithic integrated circuits, as it would not be possible to interconnect the thousands, if not millions, of transistors that diffusion techniques now make it possible to integrate on a few square centimetres of silicon.

But beyond monolithic electronics and integrated circuits, all electronics are concerned. A majority of sensors, now in thin-film, are the starting point for many electronic functions, delivering an analog signal representative of the parameter being measured: temperature, pressure, deformation, flow, light, magnetic field, chemical phenomenon, and so on.

As we have seen, thin films are once again involved in converting this analog signal into a digital signal, which is then processed in a monolithic computer.

In many cases, particularly...