Should chemical engineers warm up to hot superconductors?

The field of high T sub c superconductors is changing very fast. It is generally accepted that their applications on a large scale are many years away. From the present state of techniques used in laboratories, it is clear that there exists a variety of problems of interest to chemical engineers. There are issues involved in multi-component solid--solid reactions, mixing of powders, precipitation and co-precipitation from solutions containing many components, nucleation, emulsion and microemulsion formation, flow of cohesive powders alone or with binders or in the form of paste, flows in thin films over partially-wetted particles, grain-boundary growth and composition, evaporation of compounds through the use of quick heating methods like lasers, mixing of molecules while on their flight paths and the influence on them of jets of oxygen, deposition of particles on the substrate, many problems associated with sputtering and, finally, the issue involved in control strategies to be followed, particularly for maintaining stoichiometry of thin films