This book examines the underlying physical and chemical mechanisms driving climate imbalance through a rigorous quantitative analysis. It provides a framework for understanding how anthropic stresses affect earth’s climate by analysing the interactions among solar radiation, atmospheric composition, and earth’s surface properties. The work delivers a coherent physico‑chemical perspective on climate change that bridges multiple scientific disciplines.Features:Analyses ...

Silicon, germanium, and compound semiconductors, among which silicon carbide, gallium arsenide and gallium nitride are the most representative examples, play a withstanding role in the world economy, since they were and still are the keys for the advancement of modern microelectronics and optoelectronics, with a wealth of sister technologies relevant for renewable energy solutions and advanced spectroscopy applications.This textbook will cover the synthesis, spectroscopic character...

Despite the vast knowledge accumulated on silicon, germanium, and their alloys, these materials still demand research, eminently in view of the improvement of knowledge on silicon-germanium alloys and the potentialities of silicon as a substrate for high-efficiency solar cells and for compound semiconductors and the ongoing development of nanodevic

Defects in Nanocrystals: Structural and Physico-Chemical Aspects discusses the nature of semiconductor systems and the effect of the size and shape on their thermodynamic and optoelectronic properties at the mesoscopic and nanoscopic levels. The nanostructures considered in this book are individual nanometric crystallites, nanocrystalline films, and nanowires of which the thermodynamic, structural, and optical properties are discussed in detail. The work:Outline...

The development of solid state devices began a little more than a century ago, with the discovery of the electrical conductivity of ionic solids. Today, solid state technologies form the background of the society in which we live.The aim of this book is threefold: to present the background physical chemistry on which the technology of semiconductor devices is based; secondly, to describe specific issues such as the role of defects on the properties of solids, and the crucial influe...

Today, the silicon feedstock for photovoltaic cells comes from processes which were originally developed for the microelectronic industry. It covers almost 90% of the photovoltaic market, with mass production volume at least one order of magnitude larger than those devoted to microelectronics.However, it is hard to imagine that this kind of feedstock (extremely pure but heavily penalized by its high energy cost) could remain the only source of silicon for a photovoltaic market whic...

Polycrystalline silicon (commonly called "polysilicon") is the material of choice for photovoltaic (PV) applications. Polysilicon is the purest synthetic material on the market, though its processing through gas purification and decomposition (commonly called "Siemens" process) carries high environmental risk. While many current optoelectronic applications require high purity, PV applications do not and therefore alternate processes and materials are being explored for PV grade silicon.

Capturing the most up-to-date research in colloidal quantum dot (CQD) devices, this book is written in an accessible style by the world's leading experts. The application of CQDs in solar cells, photodetectors and light-emitting diodes (LEDs) has developed rapidly over recent years, promising to transform the future of clean energy, communications, and displays. This complete guide to the field provides researchers, students and practitioners alike with everything they need to understand t...

Ever since the beginning of mankind's efforts to pursue scientific inquiry into the laws of nature, visualization of the very distant and the very small has been paramount. The examples are numerous. A century ago, the atom appeared mysterious, a “raisin or plum pie of no structure,” until it was visualized on the appropriate length and time scales. Similarly, with telescopic observations, a central dogma of the cosmos was changed and complexity yielded to simplicity of the heliocentric st...

This book presents state-of-the-art contributions related to advanced structural characterization techniques in the field of clean energy materials with particular emphasis on solid oxide fuel cells and hydrogen storage materials. It describes several diffraction and spectroscopic techniques for the investigation of both average and local structures with several examples of the most recent materials for clean energy applications. It is the first authoritative collection of contributions on...

This volume contains papers presented at the NATO Advanced Research Workshop (ARW) Dynamic Interactions in Quantum Dot Systems held at Hotel Atrium in Puszczykowo, near Poznan, Poland, May 16-19,2002. The term low-dimensional systems, which is used in the title of this volume, refers to those systems which contain at least one dimension that is intermediate between those characteristic ofatoms/molecules and those ofthe bulk material. Depending on how many dimensions lay within this range, ...

Germanium is a semiconductor material that formed the basis for the development of transistor technology. Although the breakthrough of planar technology and integrated circuits put silicon in the foreground, in recent years there has been a renewed interest in germanium, which has been triggered by its strong potential for deep submicron (sub 45 nm) technologies. Germanium-Based technologies: From Materials to Devices is the first book to provide a broad, in-depth coverage of the field, in...