In the manufacture of (Silicon based) semiconductor devices, an oxide layer is typically formed at the surface of a wafer prior to device fabrication. This oxide layer (such as SiO2 grown on a Si (100) surface) typically grows completely amorphous with little ordering in the first atomic layers near the interface. This can lead to thickness and...

Current commercial and defense electronics are based on Silicon (Si) while most RF and optical sources and detectors are based on III-V and II-VI semiconductors grown on non-Si substrates such as GaAs, InP, InAs, GaSb, and CdZnTe. This partitioning of the substrates poses major obstacles to device integration and restricts the choice of material...

3-D composite materials are highly sought after for many industrial applications. Current 3-D materials, such as pre-impregnated substrates and ‘fuzzy’ textiles, offer limited performance improvements, especially in thin-sheet structures. In particular, the creation of composite materials with substantially improved out-of-plane performance has...

The advent of epitaxial techniques for growing thin films has allowed for the growth of unnatural, metastable structures having properties previously unattainable in equilibrium systems. Specifically, quaternary compounds are of great interest for microelectronic and optoelectronic devices due to expectations that these materials will exhibit the...