Physica, Status, Solidi [antikvár]

Preface The present issue of physica status solidi - conferences contains most of the papers (invited, oral and poster) presented at the EXMATEC 2002, the sixth in the series of biennial meetings under the title International Workshop on Expert Eva !nation and Control of Compound Semiconductor Materials and Technologies. The sixth workshop was held in Budapest, Hungary, from 26 to 29 May 2002. The previous meetings were organised in Lyon (1992), Parma (1994), Freiburg (1996), Cardiff (1998), and Herak-lion (2000) so the Budapest event was the first of these European meetings which was held outside of the present boundaries of the European Union. During the past ten years the EXMATEC series of workshops have been established not only as an important European and even global event for the relevant scientific community. This year, in Budapest, 15 invited and 17 oral papers as well as more than 100 posters were presented by 104 registered participants coming from 21 countries from nearly all comers of the world. Judging by the number of presentations and number of participants which both were similar to those of the previous meetings, the EXMATEC Workshops clearly seem to have reached their maturity. The large number of participants can be seen as a success, since this event was held in the worst period of difficulties of the world economy. About 170 submissions were accepted for a presentation, however, a significant number of both industrial and academic applicants could not attend because of financial problems. It concerned also the possible exhibitors, including also "traditional" ones. The distribution of participants among the various countries was rather balanced, Germany, France, Poland, Russia, Spain and the USA and of course the hosting country Hungary being strongly represented. Due to the favourable location and venue of the conference, scientists from other Central and East European countries showed up in a considerable number. In several cases their attendance was made possible only by support in the framework of existing bilateral scientific cooperation agreements between the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the respective national academies. Finally, beside the USA and of course Japan, such faraway places as Mexico and India were also represented. The organizers can be proud that this forum of scientists was an excellent occasion to get together specialists both from the industrial and the academic worid. This is clearly stated in the letter of an invited lecturer speaking the words: "I really liked the atmosphere at EXMATEC and in fact it is my idea of leading a company successfully that cutting-edge company R&D has to be permanently in close contact to the academic research, not only absorbing the results of the academia but also contributing to the community". Traditionally the scientific scope of EXMATEC encompasses a broad range of compound semiconductor device-related issues as well as materials related problems, in both cases emphasizing fabrication, processing and characterization. This year's meeting was not an exception either, so as a result of the selection of invited papers done mostly by the International Steering Committee and also as a result of the submission of contributions covering a rather wide spectrum of the field, the conference presentations were grouped into eight sections (the structure of this volume is slightly different): Growth: Process monitoring, improving of individual steps^ Gallium nitride and related compounds: Materials and devicesy Characterization, identification and reduction of defects in epitaxial layers. High frequency and high power devices: material related issues, Optoelectronic materials and devices, reliability issues. Quantum dots, nanostructures, low dimensional systems. Characterization techniques, and New frontiers: Materials, technologies, structures, devices. © 2003 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinhcim 1610-1634/03/00002-0817 $ 17.50+.50/0