While searching the internet for “nanotechnology,” I was not surprised to find many definitions. Two of these are as follows: (1) nanotechnology is the development and use of devices that have a size of only a few nanometers; and (2) nanotechnology can best be considered as a “catch-all” description of activities at the level of atoms and molecules that have applications in the real world. While nanotechnology is usually focused on the building of structures at the atomic scale, the characterization of such structures should also be considered as nanotechnology. At the Microscopy and Microanalysis 2002 Meeting in Quebec City, together with Tom Kelly and Mike Thompson, I organized a symposium entitled “Advances in Nanoscale Technology.” The response to this symposium was impressive, with 32 contributed and 7 invited presentations. Some of these presentations concentrated on atom probe field ion microscopy and form the basis for the invited contributions in this special issue of Microscopy and Microanalysis.

High electron mobility structures have been built for several years now using strained silicon layers grown on SixGe(1-x) with x in the 25-40% range. In these structures, a thin layer of silicon is grown between layers of unstrained GeSi alloy. Matching of the two lattices in the plane of growth produces a bi-axial strain in the silicon, splitting the conduction band and providing light electron levels for enhanced mobility. If the silicon channel becomes too thick, strain relaxation can occur by injection of misfit dislocations at the growth interface between the silicon and GeSi alloy. The strain field of these dislocations then gives rise to a local potential variation that limits electron mobility in the strained Si channel. This study seeks to verify this mechanism by measuring the absolute conduction band shifts which track the local potential near the misfit dislocations.

Extended abstract of a paper presented at Microscopy and Microanalysis 2013 in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA, August 4 – August 8, 2013.

Extended abstract of a paper presented at Microscopy and Microanalysis 2008 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA, August 3 – August 7, 2008

Extended abstract of a paper presented at Microscopy and Microanalysis 2009 in Richmond, Virginia, USA, July 26 – July 30, 2009

Extended abstract of a paper presented at Microscopy and Microanalysis 2011 in Nashville, Tennessee, USA, August 7–August 11, 2011.

Extended abstract of a paper presented at Microscopy and Microanalysis 2005 in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, July 31--August 4, 2005

A knowledge of grain boundaries (GBs) and interfaces is essential in establishing the relationship between the structural details of the boundaries and the strength of superconducting coupling and critical current densities at the boundaries in textured Bi cuprates. As a step towards such understanding, we studied GB crystallography and lattice mismatch using the constrained Coincidence-Site-Lattice (cCSL) theory. We note that to characterize arbitrary GBs in a complex system such as Bi2212, it would be desirable to find some simple analytical solutions for the cCSL approach.

We report our new concept of a “two-mirrors” model (2M-model), which allow us, in principle, to find sufficient conditions to generate corresponding analytical solutions for CSL (or cCSL), when it is applied to crystals with cubic, hexagonal, or orthorhombic symmetry. The 2M-model is based on the fact that any boundary can be described by rotating one crystal relative to the other along a common axis.

Extended abstract of a paper presented at Microscopy and Microanalysis 2012 in Phoenix, Arizona, USA, July 29 – August 2, 2012.