Preface: Phys. Status Solidi C 7/3‐4
Authors: Schropp Ruud E. I. , Zeman Miro , Rath Jatindra K. , Adriaenssens Guy J. 
Published: March 2010

The 23rd International Conference on Amorphous and Nanocrystalline Semiconductors (ICANS23) was a continuation of the biennial conferences that have been held since 1965. This conference for the first time brought the scientific community of researchers in this exciting field to The Netherlands. It was a great pleasure to host this conference in Utrecht, at our Educatorium on the university campus, 23–28 August 2009. We hope that Utrecht will be among the memorable locations for all participants.

The first ICANS – then called ICALS – was held in 1965 in Prague. Scientists who have been able to attend any part in this sequence of conferences over the past 45 years, have witnessed a flourishing field of research and an increasing number of applications based on amorphous solids. In fact, we now realize that we were actually looking at thin films with structure on the nanoscale and that many exciting developments are yet to be encountered.

This 23rd issue of the biennial conferences again provided a forum of scientific information ex‐change for an increasing number of laboratories, enabling an in‐depth understanding of the materials and facilitating industrial development of this technology. The expanding opportunities for technological appli‐cations (optical storage, photovoltaics, and more) are well recognized by industrial companies and the organizers were extremely pleased with the huge interest in our conference of more than 25 companies and institutions who sponsored ICANS23 (see listing on p. 497).

The program featured the traditional elements, such as the Mott Lecture, which was presented by Prof. Sigurd Wagner and which lively illustrated how amorphous silicon has consistently served as a ‘Vehicle and test bed for large‐area electronics’, the 5‐day program of 3 parallel sessions, the Wednesday excursion, and the Conference Banquet. An introductory Tutorial Program has in recent years become a valuable and highly popular addition to the scientific program. ICANS23 also offered this Program, to newcomers as well as to more experienced participants, who were looking for a “refreshment course”. Four Tutorial Sessions were held on Sunday, 23 August 2009 and were given by excellent lecturers: Martin Stutzmann, Alan Howling, Reinhard Carius, and Bob Street. The Tutorial Program was fully booked within a very short time; we had to increase the number of seats in the lecture room and again it was fully booked, well before the pre‐registration deadline.

ICANS23 also boosted some innovative features: in addition to the Mott Lecture, we kicked of every morning with one or two plenary keynote lectures. This facilitated a cross cutting view of the entire breadth of our field, ranging from organics, semiconducting oxides, chalcogenides, to silicon‐based semi‐conductors. The plenary lectures were given by Karen Gleason, Hideo Hosono, Stephen Elliott, Edward Hamers, and Michio Kondo.

A commemorative session was held on Tuesday, as a tribute to Walter Spear, Radu Grigorovici and Joe Marshall. The speeches were given by Ted Davis, Alex Kolobov, and Guy Adriaenssens, respectively.

Almost 450 abstracts were received. The 427 accepted abstracts were distributed over 252 poster presentations and 165 oral presentations, of which 15 invited presentations, 5 keynote lectures and 1 Mott lecture. A total of 257 full papers were submitted for the proceedings, of which 177 were accepted for publication in physica status solidi (c) and 46 were selected for double‐peer review and subsequent pub‐lication in physica status solidi (a). In total, we welcomed 367 participants from 47 countries. This shows how very much alive the ICANS is.

We thank all authors for maintaining excellent quality in the presentations at the conference and for the extremely high standard in scientific content of the manuscripts of these proceedings. We are also in‐debted to the many reviewers who evaluated the manuscripts, adhering to the tight editorial time scheme and for securing the high standards of papers for the ICANS conference proceedings. We are also thankful for the technical help of the staff of Wiley's physica status solidi, in particular Stefan Hildebrandt and Julia Hübner, who guided us through the well‐functioning OSART web‐based manuscript handling system.

Poster prizes were awarded in the categories “fundamental” and “applied” research, sponsored by Wiley‐VCH and Utrecht University. The winning posters were:

1. “Investigation of crystalline orientation factor in microcrystalline silicon thin film deposition”, K. Saito and M. Kondo, Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan (fundamental).

2. “Spin‐dependent transitions of exciton precursor pairs in poly[2‐methoxy‐5‐(20‐ethyl‐hexyloxy)‐1,4‐phenylene vinylene] (MEH‐PPV)”, S.‐Y. Lee, S.‐Y. Paik, D. R. McCamey, and C. Boehme, University of Utah, Department of Physics, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA (fundamental).

3. “Plasmas for texturing, cleaning, and deposition: towards one pump down process for heterojunction solar cells”, M. Moreno, M. Labrune, D. Daineka, and P. Roca i Cabarrocas, LPICM, Ecole Polytechnique, CNRS, Palaiseau, France, TOTAL S.A., Gas & Power – R & D Division, Courbevoie, France (applied).

4. “An overview of uncooled bolometers sensors technology based on amorphous silicon and silicon germanium alloys”, R. Ambrosio, Mario Moreno, Andrey Kosarev, Jose Mireles, Alfonso Torres, and Aurelio Heredia, UACJ, Ciudad Juarez Chihuahua, Mexico, National Institute for Astrophysics, Optics and Electronics, Puebla, Mexico, Universidad Popular Autonoma del Estado de Puebla, Puebla, Mexico (applied).

Finally, the guest editors wish to thank the many friends and colleagues involved in making this con‐ference a success. The co‐organizers F. Finger (FZ Jülich), R. Carius (FZ Jülich), R. A. C. M. M. van Swaaij (Delft University of Technology), M. Stutzmann (TU München), and M. C. M. van de Sanden (TU Eindhoven) were very helpful in putting together an exciting program, both for the conference and the tutorials, and in raising critical conference financial sponsoring. We are also very grateful to the Local Arrangements Committee, comprised of C. H. M. van der Werf, E. de Haas, C. O. van Bommel, P. M. A. Thijssen, and H. Erasmo, for accurately dealing with the enormous amount of tiny details that had to be taken care of during the preparation. We thank the members of the International Program Committee and the International Advisory Committee (listed on page 496) for their wise suggestions regarding the program and for reviewing the abstracts. And we are deeply grateful to all the institutional and industrial sponsors for their generous financial support, which made this conference possible. We are looking forward to seeing many colleagues returning and a large number of starting scientists at the next conference, ICANS24, in Nara, Japan, 22–26 August 2011 (© 2010 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)