Impurities of Semiconductor Nanostructures

Call for Papers

The accurate control of impurities is critical to the success of semiconductor materials. As semiconductor technologies move into the nanometer-sized regime, impurities continue playing a critical role. During the synthesis and processing (e.g., surface modification) of semiconductor nanostructures, impurities may be incorporated either unintentionally or intentionally. For unintentionally incorporated impurities, the study of impurities helps comprehensively understand the behavior of semiconductor nanostructures. For intentionally incorporated impurities (i.e., dopants), research efforts are leading to the realization of semiconductor nanostructures with improved or added functionalities.

This special issue aims to provide the readers with an overview on the latest research related to impurities of semiconductor nanostructures. Both experimental and theoretical papers are appreciated. They may be review papers or original research papers. We are particularly interested in papers that concern dopants (e.g., phosphorus and boron in silicon nanostructures, manganese in II-VI semiconductor nanostructures) and routinely encountered unintentionally incorporated impurities such as hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Synthesis of impurity-incorporated semiconductor nanostructures by means of all kinds of approaches (e.g., molecular beam expitaxy, plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition, and wet chemistry)
• Configurations, locations, and formation of impurities in semiconductor nanostructures
• Effects of impurities on the following properties of semiconductor nanostructures: structural, electronic, optical, magnetic, thermoelectric, photocatalytic, and transport
• Interplay between impurity effect and quantum confinement effect

Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jnm/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/ according to the following timetable:

Lead Guest Editor

• Xiaodong Pi, State Key Laboratory of Silicon Materials and Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China

Guest Editors

• Naoki Fukata, Semiconductor Nanomaterials Group, International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (MANA), National Institute for Materials Science, 1-1 Namiki, Tsukuba 305-0044, Japan
• Christophe Delerue, Département ISEN, Institut d'Electronique, de Microélectronique et de Nanotechnologie, 41 boulevard Vauban, 59046 Lille Cedex, France