Preface: phys. stat. sol. (c) 1/10

Abstract

The Fifth International Symposium on Blue Laser and Light Emitting Diodes (ISBLLED-2004) was held in Gyeongju, Korea from 15–19 March 2004. Gyeongju, the ancient capital of the thousand-year Silla kingdom (57 B.C. to 935 A.D.) provided additional pleasure to the participants as an exceptional open-air museum with antique treasures scattered all around the city. During the last decade we have witnessed remarkable developments in wide-gap semiconductors and light emitting devices in the spectral range from the visible to deep UV. The purpose of the Symposium was to provide a forum for intensive discussion on the issues and main progress especially in optoelectronic devices, material growth and characterization, and quantum structures of wide bandgap semiconductors. A total of 243 papers including 220 contributed and 23 invited ones were presented and discussed by 487 participants from 17 countries world-wide. Among them, 154 manuscripts were submitted and reviewed by the usual evaluation process of physica status solidi. Some were rejected or withdrawn, and finally 139 papers are published in the special issues of physica status solidi (a), (b), and (c). We gratefully acknowledge the referees for their careful review. The papers are grouped into 7 categories. The subheadings and the number of papers in each are as follows: Optoelectronic devices, 43; Growth and characterization, 45; Nano and quantum structures, 21; Contacts, 8; Zinc oxide, 9; Indium nitride and indium rich InGaN, 6; Others, 7. The special session of the Symposium, “The LED Highlight”, designed partially to meet the challenging targets of the technology, i.e., energy savings and clean environment preservation, drew much attention and is edited as a special coloured section in this issue. The next symposium is scheduled for Montpellier, France, in 2006. We wish the organizers of that symposium the best of luck and hope to see all of the ISBLLED-2004 participants again at ISBLLED-2006. ISBLLED-2004 was sponsored by The Research Society for the Wide-gap Semiconductors, Korean Physical Society, Office of Naval Research, Korea Science and Engineering Foundation, Korea Research Foundation, Korea Association for Photonics Industry Development, Asian Office of Aerospace Research and Development, and Korea Photonics Technology Institute. We would like to thank Ms. E. S. Hwang for her devotion to the preparation and the Proceedings of the symposium including the manuscript handling for publication.