Preface: Phys. Status Solidi C 8–9/2012
Authors: Hernández‐Calderón Isaac 
Published: August 2012

The 15th International Conference on II–VI Compounds was held in the Mayan Riviera located in the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico, on 21–26 August 2011. The meeting continued a series of biennial conferences, which was started in Durham, UK, in April of 1982. The previous conference was held in Saint‐Petersburg, Russia, in 2009. The 15th conference was organized by the Center for Research and Advanced Studies (Cinvestav‐IPN) whose main campus is in Mexico City. The conference site was located within the Cancun‐Tulum corridor called Mayan Riviera, where the majestic turquoise Caribbean Sea meets white, cool, soft sand beaches. All the attendants stayed in the same five‐star hotel, with all included services; these conditions contributed to create a stimulating and friendly atmosphere for the academic and the informal discussions.

The conference was attended by around 125 delegates (and 30 accompanying persons) from 19 countries, including a significant participation of young researchers and around 30 postgraduate students. The largest delegations came from Japan, USA, Mexico, Germany, France, Poland and Russia. The program included 3 review lectures, 14 invited speakers, 39 oral contributions, 65 posters and one special session. All the invited and oral papers were presented. All the posters were displayed from Tuesday to Thursday to allow discussions at any time in addition to the formal poster presentations on Tuesday and Thursday. As a continuation of the Review Lectures Session started in Saint‐Petersburg, we had a session on Sunday afternoon with the participation of Thomas H. Myers (Texas State University, USA), Daniel Wolverson (Univ. of Bath, UK), and Joel Cibert (Institut Néel, CNRS‐Univ. Joseph Fourier, France). These proceedings, published in physica status solidi, include 39 reviewed papers from the conference presentations.

The conference program contained topics of continuous interest and emerging ideas in physics, new materials, devices and technology of II–VI compounds which maintained full audience during all the sessions. Among them we had 1D polariton effects, non‐blinking nanocrystals, magnetic resonant tunneling devices, spin phenomena and spintronic devices. HgCdSe was introduced as the next generation infrared material; we had the presentation of new ideas related to zinc and other oxides, hybrid heterovalent II–VI/III–V structures and nanowire devices. Of great interest were the recent developments in II–VI light emitting devices such as pure green diode lasers, blue VCSELs, graded index waveguide lasers for color converters and nanowires with quantum dot insertions for single‐photon sources. Several papers dealt with recent progress in photovoltaics, including the new CuZnSnS (CZTS) materials for thin film solar cells and the platform of heterovalent nearly lattice‐matched 6.1 Å semiconductors.

As a part of the conference we had a special session devoted to the memory of Prof. Jan Gaj (1943–2011), who was a passionate physicist and developed most of his academic carrier at the Department of Experimental Physics of the University of Warsaw. One of his most significant achievements was the seminal study of optical properties of cadmium manganese telluride, published in 1979, work that contributed to bring the diluted magnetic semiconductors to the attention of the scientific community. Most recently, his interest turned to self‐assembled quantum dots with Mn, where again he contributed with many pioneering concepts

The Editor is very thankful to all the members of the International Advisory Committee and the International Program Committee for their stimulating support and advice during the organization of the conference. The Editor would like to thank the referees for their collaboration and the time dedicated to the review of the manuscripts. The organizers express their gratitude to the team of researchers and graduate students of the Group of Semiconductor Nanostructures (NanoSem) at the Physics Department of Cinvestav for their helpful and always enthusiastic collaboration before, during and after the conference. We are indebted to the sponsors of the conference mentioned in the following pages for their substantial support. We also thank Dr. Stefan Hildebrandt, Managing Editor of physica status solidi, and his excellent team for their friendly assistance and cooperation during the editorial process of these proceedings.

The next International Conference on II–VI Compounds will be held in September 2013 in Nahagama, Shiga, Japan. We wish the organizers a gorgeous and successful meeting.