Dedication: phys. stat. sol. (a) 202/15
Authors: Albrecht Martin 
Published: December 2005

The papers in this issue are dedicated to Professor Horst Paul Strunk on the occasion of his 65th birthday and his retirement from active teaching. This volume honours a scientist who has made a lasting impact on the field in electron microscopic characterisation of growth and relaxation phenomena in epitaxial growth of semiconductors. Born in The Hague, The Netherlands, on 13 June 1940, he studied physics in Stuttgart where he received his degree in Physics in 1968. He joined the group of Prof. Seeger at the Max‐Planck‐Institut für Metallforschung and defended his Ph.D. on defects in NaCl at Stuttgart University in 1973. He spent one year at Cornell University as a visiting Professor before joining Technische Universität Hamburg–Harburg in 1983. There he created the “Zentralbereich Elektronenmikroskopie” and was a professor for materials analytics from 1983 till 1989. In 1989 he changed to the University of Erlangen–Nürnberg, where he established the “Verbundlabor für hochauflösende Elektronenmikroskopie” and directed the “Lehrstuhl Mikrocharakterisierung” at the Institut für Werkstoffwissenschaften of the same university. He spent two research periods at the Universities of Rennes in France and Campinas in Brazil. Together with his colleague Prof. Jürgen Werner he created the series of conferences on polycrystalline semiconductors POLYSE which he has been supervising together with Jürgen Werner since 1990.

The research activities of Horst P. Strunk are focused on microstructure of materials and their relation to macroscopic physical properties. Main topics are dislocations, their formation and interaction mechanisms, strain relaxation as well as fundamental mechanisms of epitaxial growth. The spectrum of materials covers a wide range starting from metals over ionic crystals, e.g. NaCl to elemental and compound semiconductors. From the beginning, the main tool of study has been the transmission electron microscope. However, Horst P. Strunk recognised that a thorough understanding of materials problems would require the combined use of structural characterisation, advanced spectroscopy and modelling. Therefore he complemented electron microscopic approaches by optical methods e.g. Raman spectroscopy and cathodoluminescence. Modelling of strain states by finite elements and of defect structures by ab‐initio calculations became an important topic especially in the last years. It is characteristic for the scientific approach of Horst Strunk that methodological developments were not an end in itself but linked to problems in solid state physics and materials sciences. Among the scientific works of Strunk, a few examples should be highlighted which mark important stages in his scientific career. Pioneering work has been done on the influence of dislocations in homoepitaxial growth of Si and GaAs in collaboration with Elisabeth Bauser in Stuttgart. Strunk correlated growth spirals on the surface to dislocations that caused these step sources. Studying the dislocation structure of heteroepitaxial Ge/GaAs layers, Strunk discovered that a new dislocation multiplication source works which, later known as Hagen–Strunk source, had a strong impact on understanding of relaxation processes by dislocations in heteroepitaxial semiconductor systems. Work on electrical and structural properties of grain boundaries in silicon was performed together with Jürgen Werner. This was the starting point of a long lasting research on photovoltaic materials that accompanies Strunk till today. Fundamental studies on heteroepitaxial growth were performed in the system SiGe grown from solution. In this context, finite elements were established for the first time in the study of nanostructured materials. In the last years correlated studies on structural and optical properties on III‐nitride heterostructures were done by cathodoluminescence in the transmission electron microscope. The impact of Horst P. Strunk's work is evident from the fact that his lab became part of collaborative international projects based on the unique facilities at the “Verbundlabor für Hochauflösende Elektronenmikroskopie” and the profound knowledge in the field of crystal growth and solid state physics present in his group.

The articles in this issue contain original research results contributed by his friends, collaborators and former students. They are a testimony of the lasting impact of Horst P. Strunk's work and they express the authors' gratefulness for benefiting from his work. This volume gives us a unique opportunity to say “thank you” to Horst P. Strunk and to wish him a new period in his life that should continue to be scientifically as fruitful as up to now but less affected by the burden of administrative work than during the last years.