Preface: phys. stat. sol. (c) 5/5
Authors: Arwin Hans , Beck Uwe , Schubert Mathias 
Published: May 2008

The present issue of physica status solidi comprises a selection of papers presented at the 4th International Conference on Spectroscopic Ellipsometry (ICSE4), held in Stockholm, Sweden, from 11 to 15 June 2007. The previous ICSE conferences were held in Paris (France, 1993), Charleston (USA, 1997), and Vienna (Austria, 2003). Scientists and engineers from multidisciplinary research and application areas were asked to join the conference held ashore the vibrant and remarkable northern capital – ranked among the world's most attractive conference cities. Discovering emerging areas, inspiring future research, and experiencing a remarkable knowledge exchange, about 300 participants gathered at the Stockholm conference center (Fig. 1). The ICSE4 meeting has attracted more attendance than ever before, and left the participants with fond memories of both scientific and social events in this early and also rare rainless 2007 summer week in Stockholm. During the meeting, the ICSE4 participants gathered at the conference reception in the magnificent Golden Hall of the famous Stockholm's Nobel prize festivals City Hall, receiving the warm welcome of Stockholm's Mayor. A conference dinner with guided tour of the Vasa museum had us enjoy Swedish tradition and pride. Our excursion by boat cruising scenic Stockholm water lines left memorable impressions from the “City on islands” and Sweden's unique shores.

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Figure 1 The 4th International Conference on Spectroscopic Ellipsometry took place in Folkets Hus, a part of City Conference Centre Stockholm, located in the heart of Stockholm (Photo: Courtesy of Jimmy Bakker).

For more than a decade, the ICSE series has provided their attendees with a complete view of the latest research breakthroughs and innovations in spectroscopic reflectometry, polarimetry, and ellipsometry research; ellipsometry instrumentation, engineering, and application. The ICSE4 was opened by Prof. Ingemar Lundström on Monday, 11 June at 13:30 followed by plenary, invited, oral, and poster presentations. Excellent reviews over interdisci‐plinary fields were given by plenary speakers Maria Losurdo, Alain Diebold, Robert Collins, Rasheed M. Azzam, and Manuel Cardona. Invited speakers Herbert Wormeester, Leo Asinovski, Mattias Vaupel, Mariano Campoy Quiles, Antonello De Martino, Rasvigor Ossikovski, Eric Langereis, Karsten Hinrichs, Christian Bernhard, Vanya Darakchieva, Ian Hodgkinson, Kevin Robbie, Michael Rübhausen, Péter Petrik, Tino Hofmann, and Gang Jin focused their excellent contributions on diverse subjects of contemporary interest. The program continued with 52 regular oral and 238 poster presentations. There were 13 oral sessions organized during the five conference days:

1. Surface, Interface, and Thin Films I

2. Surface, Interface, and Thin Films II

3. Imaging and Mapping

4. Industrial Applications

5. Low‐ and High‐k Materials

6. Polymers

7. Advanced Instrumentation I

8. Advanced Instrumentation II

9. In‐situ and Real‐time Measurement and Analysis

10. Super‐ and Semiconductors

11. Multilayers and Nanostructures

12. Complex Materials and Thin Films

13. Biological and Medical Applications

The program also included a vendor session and the Paul Drude Award Ceremony session. The poster presentations were on display during two large poster sessions and found strong attendance. The conference closed on Friday noon.

For the first time in the history of the ICSE series, the organizers, Hans Arwin, Uwe Beck and Mathias Schubert, initiated a new Award. The Paul Drude Award is named in honor of Paul Karl Ludwig Drude (1867–1906), who invented and first applied ellipsometry. The Paul Drude Award is given to a young scientist for exceptional contributions to the development and application of spectroscopic ellipsometry. The Paul Drude Award shall from this conference on be handed out at each subsequent ICSE meeting. Reflecting Drude's oeuvre related to the electron‐conductivity model, emphasis is also placed on spectroscopically determining and understanding the interaction of light with matter. The ICSE4 Paul Drude Award was sponsored by the J. A. Woollam Co., Inc., of Lincoln, Nebraska, and included a monetary prize of € 1000. The Paul Drude Award was presented by the Selection Committee Secretary Hans Arwin at the ceremonial session of the ICSE4, followed by an invited presentation by the prizewinner.

Péter Petrik from the Research Institute for Technical Physics and Materials Science at the Hungarian Academy of Science, Budapest, received the 2007 Paul Drude Award (Fig. 2) for his unique contributions with strong focus on ion‐implanted single‐crystal semiconductor materials and the damage that these materials sustain through the implantation process. Péter Petrik delivered main contributions to the systematic improvement of optical models and their applicability in spectroscopic ellipsometry to make this technique better adaptable as a non‐destructive, in‐line characterization of semiconductor surfaces and near‐surface layers. His research included the study of ion implanted semiconductors, porous silicon, high‐k materials, poly‐ and nano‐crystalline semiconductors. He has implemented the optical models for characterization and understanding of nucleation and growth of diamond films, ion implantation induced damage accumulation layers, surface roughness, ion implantation‐caused damage surface and depth profiles, polysilicon formation, and surface damage caused by plasma immersion ion implantation. He applied the ellipsometry technique to poly‐ and single‐crystalline silicon, silicon carbide, helium implanted silicon and polysilicon on oxide, for example. Péter Petrik demonstrated that ellipsometry can deliver new insight into semiconductor surfaces and near‐surface material properties. Péter Petrik revealed upon his achievements his present role as a leading scientist in the development and the application of spectroscopic ellipsometry.

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Figure 2 Péter Petrik (left), Research Institute for Technical Physics and Materials Science at the Hungarian Academy of Science, Budapest, receives the 2007 Paul Drude Award from Hans Arwin (Photo: Courtesy of Jimmy Bakker).

The ICSE4 program selection found strong support by the Program Committee with Ilsin An (Hanyang University, Ansan, Korea), David Aspnes (North Carolina State University, USA), Rasheed M. Azzam (University of New Orleans, USA), Christian Bernhard (University of Fribourg, Switzerland), Chien Chou (National Yang Ming University, P.R. China), Robert Collins (University of Toledo, USA), Bernard Drévillon (Ecole Polytechnique, France), Norbert Esser (Institute for Analytical Sciences Berlin, Germany), Kurt Hingerl (Universität Linz, Austria), Gang Jin (Chinese Academy of Science, P. R. China), Gerald E. Jellison, Jr., (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee, USA), Kenneth Järrendahl (Linköping University, Sweden), Stergios Logothetidis (Aristotle University Thessaloniki, Greece), Maria Losurdo (University of Bari, Italy), Kamil Postava (Technical University of Ostrava, Czech Republic), Michael Rübhausen (Universität Hamburg, Germany), and Herbert Wormeester (University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands). The International Advisory Committee with Martin Dressel (Universität Stuttgart, Germany), Miklos Fried (Research Institute for Materials Science, Hungary), Ian Hodgkinson (University of Otago, New Zealand), Josef Humlìček (Masaryk University, Czech Republic), Ola Hunderi (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway), Eugene Irene (University of North Carolina, USA), Timo Jääskeläinen (University of Joensuu, Finland), Young‐Dong Kim (Kyung Hee University, South Korea), Josette Rivory (Université Pierre et Marie Curie, France), Pentti Tengvall (Linköping University, Sweden), and John A. Woollam (University of Nebraska‐Lincoln, USA) provided valuable help in steering ICSE4 to yet another success within the conference series. The Industrial Committee helped organizing the impressive industry exhibition section of ICSE4 with Bernd Gruska (SENTECH Instruments), Dirk Hönig (Nanofilm Technologie), Reiner Brings (HORIBA Jobin Yvon), Thomas Wagner (LOT‐Oriel/J. A. Woollam Co., Inc.), Jean‐Louis Stehle (SOPRA), Thomas Zettler (LayTec GmbH), and Corey Bungay (Lockheed Martin). The organizers were proud to have our pioneers and leaders in the field serve on the Honorary Committee with Prof. Dr. Manuel Cardona, Dr. Harland Tompkins, and Prof. Dr. Arnulf Roeseler (Germany). The selection of the Paul Drude Award was a difficult task due to many outstanding candidates, and the organizers were supported by David Aspnes, Martin Dressel, Josef Humlìček, and Rasheed M. Azzam.

New to ICSE4 was the assignment of two best poster and two best oral presentation awards. The Program Committee members selected among the numerous outstanding talks the oral presentations of Jimmy Bakker on “Immunodetection using computer screen photo‐assisted ellipsometry” and Bruno Gallas on “Changes in optical properties of MnAs thin films on GaAs (001) induced by a to b phase transition”. The two ICSE4 Best Poster Awards were given to Tino Hofmann for “The optical Hall effect”, and Sami Ben Hatit on “Angle‐resolved Mueller polarimeter using a microscope objective”.

The conference would have been impossible without the help from numerous students and coworkers. The Linköping University (LiU) team consisted of Kenneth Järrendahl (Financials), Michal Poksinski (IT, Site coordinator, pre‐ and on‐site Webpage programming), Susann Årnfelt (Social program), Pia Johansson, Petra Andreasson, and Ulla Nilsson. The University of Nebraska‐Lincoln (UNL) team provided in tedious work the ICSE4 abstract book (Daniel Schmidt, Tino Hofmann, Mario Saenger, Venkata M. Voora, Eric Montgomery), and ensured with Daniel Thompson, Saby Sarkar, William Nosal (UNL), Michal Poksinski, Jimmy Bakker, Henrik Wiklund Roger Magnusson, Lars Karlsson (LiU), and Carsten Bundesmann (IOM Leipzig) the technical background before, during and after each session (Fig. 3). The abstract book content and ICSE4 program are still available at www.icse4.se.

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Figure 3 Part of our technical support crew who helped enabling a smooth conference flow before, during and after each presentation (Photo: Courtesy of Carsten Bundesmann).

Ellipsometry has matured as major tool in almost all fields of contemporary academic research. It has keyed numerous present day production technologies, and will likely be part of our future industrial developments. The diverse scientific distribution fingerprints the paper collection in this issue. This versatility is due to the fact that ellipsometry deals with the very fundamental property of electromagnetic waves, its state of polarization. Our today's perception and understanding of the world and its universe is widely based on electromagnetic field theories and experimental equipment derived thereof. With Paul Drude's identification of electrical and optical properties of matter, measurement of light is a convenient means for characterization of material properties. Ellipsometry has continuously emerged in science, which is simply reflected by the constantly growing numbers in publication data bases (Fig. 4). While many fields inflate and deflate, ellipsometry continues spreading into different fields, enabling continued progress and knowledge gain.

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Figure 4 Number of publications on ellipsometry according to ISI Web of KnowledgeSM as of 6 December 2007 (search topic “ellipsometry”). Peaks are due to publication of previous ICSE conference proceedings in 1993, 1998, and 2004.

The ellipsometry future looks interesting. New applications and new instrumentation developments may be seen. Miniaturization, extreme wavelength regions, imaging and time‐domain schemes may be the key words of ICSE5. Applications in bio and life sciences may outnumber those in the more traditional solid state materials research areas. When asked what ellipsometry does, a simple answer may be that our world is composed of 16 images – the Mueller matrix elements – and of which human vision has access to only one. Thus, ellipsometry – in principle – provides the remaining 15 images, which are rich in information about the constitution and structure of the surrounding matter and geometries. The majority of the information is yet to be obtained. With this expectation, we look forward to the ICSE5 meeting, which will certainly attract yet another record number of participants. The next location for ICSE5 is currently being discussed, and details will be made available on the internet.

Finally, the organizers would like to thank all participants for their outstanding contributions, all sponsors for their valuable support, all visitors for their interest, and to the community for entrusting us with the organization of the ICSE4. (© 2008 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)