Abstract
This issue of physica status solidi (a) contains the majority of papers presented at the 2nd Sino–German Symposium “The Silicon Age” which was held at the Lindner Hotel Cottbus, Germany, 19–24 September 2005. This meeting followed the 1st Symposium “Progress in Silicon Materials” held in June 2002 in Hangzhou, P.R. China. 8 Chinese and 14 German scientists from universities, research institutes and industry were invited to present their views about different aspects of silicon.
There was a continuous progress in silicon materials development during the last 40–50 years, driven by the need of the IC industry for better and larger monocrystalline silicon wafers. Moreover, low‐cost crystalline silicon now dominates the world's production of solar cells in the photovoltaics industry. Furthermore, there are intensive research activities worldwide for on‐chip integration of Si‐based photonics in CMOS technology. In addition, new areas being connected with silicon are starting to appear, namely Si‐based biochips and nanoelectronics. Silicon, one can reasonably argue, is already the most investigated of all materials. However, there is still a need for continuation of research and development regarding numerous aspects of Si and also SiGe, including related technologies, advanced diagnostics or the role of crystal defects, which are the working fields of many laboratories all over the world. This was also shown by the presentations at the symposium and can be found in the contributions contained in this issue.
The organizers would like to thank the participants for their high level contributions and discussions during the symposium. This intensive and open communication allowed the participants to create synergies between the different fields of silicon research and also to build up relationships for cooperation between Chinese and German research groups.
Finally, we would like to thank the Sino–German Science Center for the financial support of the symposium.