Book Description

These are the proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Defects in Semiconductors, ICDS-20, which was held in Berkeley, California, between July 26-30, 1999. It has been 40 years since the first conference in this series was organized in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and we take this opportunity to identify and congratulate two of our friends and colleagues, Professors Anant K. Ramdas and George D. Watkins, for their seminal contributions to this field of research over the entire time span covered by the series. The advent of new materials and materials systems, together with the ever increasing technological demands regarding the sub-micrometer control of the distribution and concentrations of numerous types of dopants and defects, have kept the field of physics of imperfections vibrant and full of surprises. The 278 registered attendees from 25 countries presented and discussed a wide range of new experimental and theoretical results. Three plenary talks, all focusing on wide bandgap semiconductors, nineteen invited presentations, eighty-two contributed talks and 218 posters, for a total of 322 presentations, gave a comprehensive panorama of the continuously evolving field. The group III-nitrides and related materials, diamond and the effects of hydrogen represented a major portion of the conference content with the remaining contributions covering many exciting findings in elemental and compound semiconductors and their alloys.