This volume addresses the burgeoning field of wide band gap materials. The 64 contributed and invited papers will do much to stimulate the well-justified ongoing work, both theoretical and experimental, in this area. The high standard of the papers attests to the significant progress that has been made in this field, as well as reporting on the challenging problems that still remain to be solved.
Since its inception in 1966, the series of numbered volumes known as Semiconductors and Semimetals has distinguished itself through the careful selection of well-known authors, editors, and contributors.The"Willardson and Beer"Series, as it is widely known, has succeeded in publishing numerous landmark volumes and chapters. Not only did many of these volumes make an impact at the time of their publication, but they continue to be well-cited years after their original release. Recently, Professor Eicke R. Weber of the University of California at Berkeley joined as a co-editor of the series. Professor Weber, a well-known expert in the field of semiconductor materials, will further contribute to continuing the series' tradition of publishing timely, highly relevant, and long-impacting volumes. Some of the recent volumes, such as Hydrogen in Semiconductors, Imperfections in III/V Materials, Epitaxial Microstructures, High-Speed Heterostructure Devices,Oxygen in Silicon, and others promise indeed that this tradition will be maintained and even expanded.Reflecting the truly interdisciplinary nature of the field that the series covers, the volumes in Semiconductors and Semimetals have been and will continue to be of great interest to physicists, chemists, materials scientists, and device engineers in modern industry.
Diamond has a unique combination of properties, such as the highest hardness and thermal conductivity among any known material, high electrical resistivity, a large optical band gap and a high transmission, good resistance to chemical erosion, low adhesion and friction, and extremely low thermal expansion coefficient. As such, diamond has been a desirable material in a wide range of applications in mechanical, chemical, optical, thermal and electrical engineering. In many of the cases, the surface of a diamond component or element must have a superior finish, often down to a surface roughness of nanometers. Nevertheless, due to its extreme hardness and chemical inertness, the polishing of diamond and its composites has been a sophisticated process. Polishing of Diamond Materials will provide a state-of-the-art analysis, both theoretically and experimentally, of the most commonly used polishing techniques for mono/poly-crystalline diamond and chemical vapour deposition (CVD) diamond films, including mechanical, chemo-mechanical, thermo-chemical, high energy beam, dynamic friction and other polishing techniques. The in-depth discussions will be on the polishing mechanisms, possible modelling, material removal rate and the quality control of these techniques. A comparison of their advantages and drawbacks will be carried out to provide the reader with a useful guideline for the selection and implementation of these polishing techniques. Polishing of Diamond Materials will be of interest to researchers and engineers in hard materials and precision manufacturing, industry diamond suppliers, diamond jewellery suppliers and postgraduate students in the area of precision manufacturing.
Carbon has always been a unique and intriguing material from a funda mental standpoint and, at the same time, a material with many technological uses. Carbon-based materials, diamond, graphite and their many deriva tives, have attracted much attention in recent years for many reasons. Ion implantation, which has proven to be most useful in modifying the near surface properties of many kinds of materials, in particular semiconductors, has also been applied to carbon-based materials. This has yielded, mainly in the last decade, many scientifically interesting and technologically impor tant results. Reports on these studies have been published in a wide variety of journals and topical conferences, which often have little disciplinary overlap, and which often address very different audiences. The need for a review to cover in an integrated way the various diverse aspects of the field has become increasingly obvious. Such a review should allow the reader to get an overview of the research that has been done thus far, to gain an ap preciation of the common features in the response of the various carbon to ion impact, and to become aware of current research oppor allotropes tunities and unresolved questions waiting to be addressed. Realizing this, and having ourselves both contributed to the field, we decided to write a review paper summarizing the experimental and theoretical status of ion implantation into diamond, graphite and related materials.
In recent times the nuclear industry has thrown up challenges which cannot be met by the application of conventional civil and materials engineering knowledge. The contributions in this volume investigate all aspects of cement performance. The scope of the papers demonstrate the current balance of activities which have as their objective the elucidation of kinetics and immobilization, determining material interactions and of assessing future performance. The papers reflect the varied goals of the sponsors who include national governments, the Commission of the European Communities and the nuclear industries, coming together to keep each other at the forefront of advanced technology.
