Group IV Semiconductors Materials Research: Growth, Characterization and Applications to Electronics and Spintronics

“Nobody's perfect”, said a millionaire in a famous movie – and was right. Solids without defects are impossible for thermodynamic reasons. With defects, the world is much more versatile and interesting, so that researchers have a nice additional cover-up to justify their budgets. The defects are a Janus Bifrons: they can deteriorate the properties of materials and structures, but they can also provide them with unique and useful properties which are absent in the perfect solids. Even the DC current is only possible due to the carrier scattering by phonons (dynamic imperfections of a static crystal lattice) and impurities/defects (static imperfections). As we are living more and more in a world replete with man-made nanoobjects, it obviously pays to invest time and money in studies of defects in them. This was the idea behind the organization of the first EMRS Symposium “Defect-induced effects in nanomaterials” in September 2012 in Warsaw. The success of this event encouraged us to organize follow-up symposia in the framework of the 2014 and 2016 EMRS Spring meetings in Lille. The present proceedings comprise 25 research papers based on presentations held at Symposium BB on defects in nanomaterials in Lille 2016. The event attracted 150 participants from 45 countries on 5 continents, who made 17 invited, 63 oral and 80 poster presentations. The symposium turned out to be an open forum at which researchers and engineers were engaged in discussions of current problems related to nanomaterials and nanostructures which differ substantially from those observed in bulk materials. The presented papers have demonstrated spectacular optical and magnetic effects due to deliberately created defects or radiation-induced transformation of nanomaterials as well as radiation- and implantation-induced modifications of low-dimensional insulators and semiconductors, with numerous potential applications. The hot topics of the symposium included:. – Swift heavy ion irradiation as the means to tailor nanomaterials. – Effects of grain boundaries and interfaces on the diffusion and transport processes in nanomaterials. – Electronic structure of defects in nanostructures; consequences for carrier transport, magnetism, optical and electronic properties, as well as device parameters. – Creation, evolution and properties of radiation defects in nanosize materials and heterostructures; the role of interfaces, nonstoichiometry, strain and adjacent layers. – Defects in two-dimensional materials. – Use of defects as microprobes. – Multiscale computer modeling of defect creation in nanomaterials. – Novel technological processes of micro-, nano- and optoelectronics using defects and radiation effects in nanostructures. The Symposium BB participants, through their valuable contributions, friendly and open discussions, turned the symposium into an exciting event. We are deeply grateful to all of them. We also greatly acknowledge the financial and administrative support of the E-MRS Headquarters and The Office of Naval Research Global (ONRG) which allowed the organization of the symposium. Wiley-VCH took over the publication of the symposium proceedings, and we got the most out of the efficacious help of its staff in editing the manuscripts.