Advances in Microwave and Radio Frequency Processing: Report from the 8th International Conference on Microwave and High-Frequency Heating held in Bayreuth, Germany, September 3-7, 2001

Prometheus brought fire to mankind Arthur R. von Hippel “Dielectrics and Waves”, 1954 Our contribution? There are only few areas of research and development of a comparable scientific and technological extension as microwave and high frequency processing. “Pr- essing” means not only application of radiation of 300 MHz to 300 GHz f- quency to synthesis, heating or ionisation of matter but also generation, transm- sion and detection of microwave and radio frequency radiation. Microwave and high frequency sources positioned in the orbit are the foun- tion of modern satellite telecommunication systems, gyrotron tubes being pr- ently developed in different countries all over the world will most probably be the major devices to open up a new era of energy supply to mankind be means of - sion plasma. Although initiated by military purposes during the Second World War (RADAR, Radio Detection and Ranging), microwave and high frequency utilisation has spread over almost every important aspect of normal day life since than, from individual mobile phones and kitchen microwave ovens to industrial food processing, production of composites as sustainable building materials, green chemistry, medical applications and finally infrastructure installations like GPS and Galileo, to name only few examples. These different areas of microwave and high frequency radiation application can not be unified within one group of scientists and technologists. There are s- eral distinguished communities active e.g., in the area of telecommunication s- tems, strong microwaves for fusion plasma or plasma based materials processing.