Group‐IV semiconductors at the nanoscale

Abstract

The European Materials Research Society's (E-MRS) spring conference was held in Lille from May 2 to May 6, 2016. The conference attracted some 3000 participants and the scientific program was divided into ∼35 parallel symposia, grouped into 5 main themes. Symposium O: Group IV semiconductors at the nanoscale – towards applications in photonics, electronics and life sciences received 106 abstracts. The symposium program was laid out on 7 half-days including 16 invited presentations, 34 contributed talks and 48 posters in one poster session. The opening, invited talk was given by Dr. Leigh Canham on nanostructured silicon for medical use. His discovery of the luminescent properties of nanoscale silicon in 1990 makes him a true legendary in the field. While this first session was devoted to nanostructures for bio applications, other sessions were focused on nanowires, biosensing, silicon and germanium nanocrystals, two-dimensional layers, nanoscale memories, carbon and SiC quantum dots, and finally, theory. The symposium was well attended with sometimes up to ∼100 attendees, but typically attracting some 30–50 people in the audience. The symposium had three sponsors. The proceedings of the symposium contains 13 papers out of 18 submitted. We had decided to select physica status solidi (a) as the journal for publishing these proceedings instead of the less strict physica status solidi (c). That demanded somewhat higher quality from the submitted papers and a reviewing process involving two referees on every paper. Jan Linnros Tom Gregorkiewicz Minoru Fujii Mark Reed