18th Microscopy of Semiconducting Materials Conference (MSM XVIII)

This volume contains invited and contributed papers from the 18th international conference on 'Microscopy of Semiconducting Materials' held at St Catherine's College, University of Oxford, on 7–11 April 2013. The meeting was organised under the auspices of the Royal Microscopical Society and supported by the Institute of Physics as well as the Materials Research Society of the USA.

This conference series deals with recent advances in semiconductor studies carried out by all forms of microscopy, with an emphasis on electron microscopy and scanning probe microscopy with high spatial resolution. This time the meeting was attended by 109 delegates from 17 countries world-wide. We were welcomed by Professor Sir Peter Hirsch, who noted that this was the first of these conferences where Professor Tony Cullis was unable to attend, owing to ill-health. During the meeting a card containing greetings from many of Tony's friends and colleagues was signed, and duly sent to Tony afterwards.

As semiconductor devices shrink further new routes for device processing and characterisation need to be developed, and, for the latter, methods that offer sub-nanometre spatial resolution are particularly valuable. The various forms of imaging, diffraction and spectroscopy available in modern microscopes are powerful tools for studying the microstructure, electronic structure, chemistry and also electric fields in semiconducting materials. Recent advances in instrumentation, from lens aberration correction in both TEM and STEM instruments, to the development of a wide range of scanning probe techniques, as well as new methods of signal quantification have been presented at this conference. Two topics that have at this meeting again highlighted the interesting contributions of aberration corrected transmission electron microscopy were:

• contrast quantification of annular dark-field STEM images in terms of chemical composition (Z-contrast), sample thickness and strain, and

• the study of dislocation core structures at atomic resolution.

Figure 1. Conference photo taken by JLH inside St Catherine's College

Each of the 49 manuscripts submitted for publication in this proceedings volume has been independently reviewed, most by two reviewers, and revised where necessary before being accepted for publication. The Editors are grateful to the following colleagues for their rapid and careful reviewing of manuscripts: R Beanland, C B Boothroyd, P D Brown, D Cherns, A J Craven, K Durose, C J Humphreys, U Kaiser, L Lari, G A Moebus, A G Norman, P Pecz, I M Ross, D J Smith and K Tillmann.

Poster prizes were awarded to the following students: joint first prizes to Robert Schewski, Leibniz-Institut für Kristallzüchtung, Berlin and Xiaowei Wu, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy; and joint second prizes to Tyche Perkisas, University of Antwerp and Adi Pantzer, Ben Gurion University of the Negev. These presentations indicated both a broad range of microscopy techniques and materials issues covered as well as the excellent standard of microscopy now being achieved by younger scientists. They also reflected the internationality of the attending scientists.

On the evening of 9 April 2013, the RMS Annual Materials Lecture was delivered by Professor Sir Colin J Humphreys from the University of Cambridge. Colin's highly entertaining talk on 'How microscopy and semiconductors can help to solve some major world problems' spanned a very broad range, from detailed atomistic investigation of lattice defects in gallium nitride layers by transmission electron microscopy, to the production of new light emitting diodes and its impact on reducing both our electricity bills and the effect of global warming.

Entertainment during the conference dinner was provided by the Ariella String Trio, and during the meal we held a friendly competition in which teams had to recognise invited speakers and organisers from photos of them as babies or young children.

The organisers are very grateful to the following companies who contributed to the success of the meeting by presenting trade stands on 9 and 10 April: Agar Scientific, Fischione, Gatan, ISS Group Services and Leica Microsystems.

St Catherine's College is thanked for provision of excellent accommodation, superb lecture facilities and the very friendly catering staff who served food and drink during the days. There was even a compliment from some of our French visitors for the cheese board during the conference dinner!

Finally, we would like to thank the staff of the Royal Microscopical Society for their expert help in planning and support of this conference – in particular Victoria Masters and her assistant Alice Pyper for their dedicated professional support and always joyful approach to any issues that arose.

September 2013 Thomas Walther John L Hutchison