Preface: Phys. Status Solidi C 8/1
Authors: Singh Jai 
Published: January 2011

The 9th International Conference on Excitonic and Photonic Processes in Condensed and Nano Materials (EXCON'10) was held at the Novotel Hotel, 11–15 July 2010, Brisbane, Australia. The series of EXCON conference, started from Darwin (Australia) in 1994 with an objective of providing an international interdisciplinary forum for mutual research communications among solid state physicists, photo‐physicists, photo‐chemists and photo‐biologists, as well as material scientists. The EXCON conferences are held at a two years interval in every even year since 1994 and venue has been rotating among Australia, Europe, America and Asia. The past conferences were held in Darwin (Australia, 1994), Kurort Gohrisch (Germany, 1996), Boston (USA, 1998), Osaka (Japan, 2000), Darwin (Australia, 2002), Cracow (Poland, 2004), Winston‐Salem (USA, 2006) and Kyoto (Japan, 2008). At the advice of the EXCON'10 International Advisory Committee, however, future EXCON conferences will be held at a cycle of three years after the EXCON'12 to be held in Groningen, the Netherlands and the venue will rotate only within Europe, North America and Japan if no other bids are available.

EXCON'10 had attracted about 140 researchers from 23 countries. It was therefore necessary to hold two parallel sessions in two afternoons of the conference to cover 30 invited papers and all contributed papers.

All presented papers were refereed according to the policy of physica status solidi. I would like to thank the International Advisory Committee, invited speakers, participants and external referees who took part in the review process and devoted their time with promptness. It is also my pleasure to thank the Editorial Staff of Physica Status Solidi for their cooperating efforts in publishing the proceedings in this special issue.

The conference was sponsored by the Charles Darwin University, Australian Research Council's Nanotechnology Network, Wiley‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Australian Solar Energy Society (AuSES) and Brisbane City Council. I would like to thank the International Advisory Committee members for their continuous support throughout the time of preparation and planning of the conference, in particular would like to mention Professor Tadashi Itoh, Chair of EXCON'08, for providing seeding money and Professor Richard Williams for chairing the prize awarding committee. I would also like to thank Dr Subhash Chandra, Howard Pullen, Elodie Amann, Paul Berthomieu and Alexander Fichet, members of the local organizing committee, without their help the day‐to‐day activities would not have run as smoothly as they did. Finally, I would like to thank Ling Yu, Web Designer, Charles Darwin University for designing the EXCON'10 logo with a pair of purple flowers representing an exciton.The big flower is called Sturt's desert rose which is a floral emblem of the Northern Territory (Darwin) and small purple is known as Cooktown orchid, which is a floral emblem of the Queensland (Brisbane). The flower of a plant represents its excited state and two types of flowers coupled together symbolise a pair of an excited electron and a hole in an exciton formed between Darwin and Brisbane.

The publisher, Wiley‐VCH had sponsored two physica status solidi young researcher awards for outstanding contributed papers presented either as an oral or poster presentation by students and/or early career researchers (ECR) less than 35 years old. These two prizes were awarded to Masayoshi Ichimiya, Osaka Dental University, Japan for his paper entitled, “Room‐temperature degenerate four‐wave mixing in CuCl thin films” and Akifumi Asahara, University of Tokyo, Japan, for his paper entitled, “Photo‐induced phase switching dynamics in RbMn[Fe(CN)6] probed by accumulation free mid‐infrared spectroscopy”. The Australian Solar Energy Society had sponsored an award for the best paper oral/poster presented by a student/early career researcher in the field of solar cells/photovoltaic and it was awarded to Dr Supriya Pillai, University of New South Wales, Australia, for her paper entitled, “Surface plasmons for improving the performance of silicon quantum dot structures for third generation solar cell applications”.

As stated above, EXCON'12 will be held at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands in 2012 and I would like to wish a very successful event to the Chairs, Professors Jasper Knoester and Paul van Loosdrecht, and the local organizing committee of EXCON'12.