Preface: Phys. Status Solidi C 2/2012
Authors: Walther Martin , Ambacher Oliver 
Published: January 2012

The present issue of physica status solidi contains papers presented at the 38th International Symposium on Compound Semiconductors (ISCS 2011). The symposium was held May 22–26, 2011 at the Maritim proArte Hotel in Berlin, Germany.

Following the great success in Takamatsu, Japan, the “38th International Symposium on Compound Semiconductors (ISCS 2011)” was again held co‐located with the “23rd International Conference on Indium Phosphide and Related Materials (IPRM 2011)“ under the umbrella of the “Compound Semiconductor Week 2011”.

The symposium is one in an annual series, which has in the past rotated between North America, Europe and Asia. The last three conferences were held in Takamatsu, Japan (2010), Santa Barbara, USA (2009) and Rust, Germany (2008). The history of the symposium goes back to 1966 when the first “International Symposium on GaAs and Related Compounds” took place in Reading, England.

The scope of the meeting includes both science and technology and the entire spectrum of III–V and II–VI compound semiconductors as well as SiGe, SiC and carbon related materials. Eight program sub‐committees, covered crystal growth and deposition techniques, oxides and carbon related materials, micro‐ and nanotechnologies, simulation and characterization, light emitters and detectors, high frequency and high power electronics, novel device concepts as well as sensors and actuators.

The Compound Semiconductor Week 2011 attracted more than 460 participants from all over the world. A total of 370 papers were presented, including 3 joint plenary talks. Over the course of ISCS 2011, a total of 17 invited papers, 102 oral contributions and 120 poster presentations were given.

The conference was opened with a plenary session by the Nobel prize winner 2010, Andre Geim from Manchester University, highlighting the current research on “Graphene”. Following his excellent talk, Connie Chang‐Hasnain, University of California, Berkeley, presented her pioneering research work on “Nanolasers on Silicon for Chip‐Scale Optoelectronics”. In a very interesting plenary talk on the future of optoelectronic communication, Meint Smit, Eindhoven University presented his view on “A New Era for InP‐based Photonic Integration”.

We would like to thank all of the participants of ISCS 2011 for contributing to the success of the meeting and hope that you enjoyed the lively discussions with your colleagues as well as the atmosphere in the very heart of Berlin. We acknowledge the excellent work of the program committee, under the chair of Nicolas Grandjean and thank the referees of the manuscripts for their work.

Finally, we extend our thanks to the VDE Association for Electrical, Electronic and Information Technologies and to the organizing committees from the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics and the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications.

The 39th International Symposium on Compound Semiconductors, chaired by Pallab Bhattacharya from the University of Michigan, will be held on the campus of the University of California at Santa Barbara from August 27–30, 2012.

Freiburg, December 2011