Good old Gutenberg could not have imagined that his revolutionary printing concept which so greatly contributed to dissemination of knowledge and thus today 's wealth, would have been a source of inspiration five hundred years later. Now, it seems intuitive that a simple way to produce a large number of replicates is using a mold to emboss pattern you need, but at the nanoscale nothing is simple: the devil is in the detail. And this book is about the "devil." In the following 17 chapters, the authors-all of them well recognized and active actors in this emerging field-describe the state-of-the-art, today 's technological bottlenecks and the prospects for micro-contact printing and nanoimprint lithography. Many results of this book originate from projects funded by the European Com mission through its "Nanotechnology Information Devices" (NID) initiative. NID was launched with the objective to develop nanoscale devices for the time when the red brick scenario of the ITRS roadmap would be reached. It became soon clear however, that there was no point to investigate only alternative devices to CMOS, but what was really needed was an integrated approach that took into account more facets of this difficult undertaking. Technologically speaking, this meant to have a coherent strategy to develop novel devices, nanofabrication tools and circuit & system architectures at the same time."

In the last ten years, the physics and technology of low dimensional structures has experienced a tremendous development. Quantum structures with vertical and lateral confinements are now routinely fabricated with feature sizes below 100 run. While quantization of the electron states in mesoscopic systems has been the subject of intense investigation, the effect of confinement on lattice vibrations and its influence on the electron-phonon interaction and energy dissipation in nanostructures received atten tion only recently. This NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Phonons in Sem iconductor Nanostructures was a forum for discussion on the latest developments in the physics of phonons and their impact on the electronic properties of low-dimensional structures. Our goal was to bring together specialists in lattice dynamics and nanos tructure physics to assess the increasing importance of phonon effects on the physical properties of one-(lD) and zero-dimensional (OD) structures. The Workshop addressed various issues related to phonon physics in III-V, II-VI and IV semiconductor nanostructures. The following topics were successively covered: Models for confined phonons in semiconductor nanostructures, latest experimental observations of confined phonons and electron-phonon interaction in two-dimensional systems, elementary excitations in nanostructures, phonons and optical processes in reduced dimensionality systems, phonon limited transport phenomena, hot electron effects in quasi - ID structures, carrier relaxation and phonon bottleneck in quantum dots."

In the last ten years, the physics and technology of low dimensional structures has experienced a tremendous development. Quantum structures with vertical and lateral confinements are now routinely fabricated with feature sizes below 100 run. While quantization of the electron states in mesoscopic systems has been the subject of intense investigation, the effect of confinement on lattice vibrations and its influence on the electron-phonon interaction and energy dissipation in nanostructures received atten tion only recently. This NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Phonons in Sem iconductor Nanostructures was a forum for discussion on the latest developments in the physics of phonons and their impact on the electronic properties of low-dimensional structures. Our goal was to bring together specialists in lattice dynamics and nanos tructure physics to assess the increasing importance of phonon effects on the physical properties of one-(lD) and zero-dimensional (OD) structures. The Workshop addressed various issues related to phonon physics in III-V, II-VI and IV semiconductor nanostructures. The following topics were successively covered: Models for confined phonons in semiconductor nanostructures, latest experimental observations of confined phonons and electron-phonon interaction in two-dimensional systems, elementary excitations in nanostructures, phonons and optical processes in reduced dimensionality systems, phonon limited transport phenomena, hot electron effects in quasi - ID structures, carrier relaxation and phonon bottleneck in quantum dots."

Good old Gutenberg could not have imagined that his revolutionary printing concept which so greatly contributed to dissemination of knowledge and thus today 's wealth, would have been a source of inspiration five hundred years later. Now, it seems intuitive that a simple way to produce a large number of replicates is using a mold to emboss pattern you need, but at the nanoscale nothing is simple: the devil is in the detail. And this book is about the "devil." In the following 17 chapters, the authors-all of them well recognized and active actors in this emerging field-describe the state-of-the-art, today 's technological bottlenecks and the prospects for micro-contact printing and nanoimprint lithography. Many results of this book originate from projects funded by the European Com mission through its "Nanotechnology Information Devices" (NID) initiative. NID was launched with the objective to develop nanoscale devices for the time when the red brick scenario of the ITRS roadmap would be reached. It became soon clear however, that there was no point to investigate only alternative devices to CMOS, but what was really needed was an integrated approach that took into account more facets of this difficult undertaking. Technologically speaking, this meant to have a coherent strategy to develop novel devices, nanofabrication tools and circuit & system architectures at the same time."

This volume comprises the proceedings of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on the Science and Engineering of 1- and O-dimensional semiconductors held at the University of Cadiz from 29th March to 1st April 1989, under the auspices of the NATO International Scientific Exchange Program. There is a wealth of scientific activity on the properties of two-dimensional semiconductors arising largely from the ease with which such structures can now be grown by precision epitaxy techniques or created by inversion at the silicon-silicon dioxide interface. Only recently, however, has there burgeoned an interest in the properties of structures in which carriers are further confined with only one or, in the extreme, zero degrees of freedom. This workshop was one of the first meetings to concentrate almost exclusively on this subject: that the attendance of some forty researchers only represented the community of researchers in the field testifies to its rapid expansion, which has arisen from the increasing availability of technologies for fabricating structures with small enough (sub - O. I/tm) dimensions. Part I of this volume is a short section on important topics in nanofabrication. It should not be assumed from the brevity of this section that there is little new to be said on this issue: rather that to have done justice to it would have diverted attention from the main purpose of the meeting which was to highlight experimental and theoretical research on the structures themselves.

This volume contains the Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on "Optical Properties of Narrow-Gap Low-Dimensional Structures," held from July 29th to August 1st, 1986, in St. Andrews, Scotland, under the auspices of the NATO International Scientific Exchange Program. The workshop was not limited to optical properties of narrow-gap semiconductor structures (Part III). Sessions on, for example, the growth methods and characterization of III-V, II-VI, and IV-VI materials, discussed in Part II, were an integral part of the workshop. Considering the small masses of the carriers in narrow-gap low dimensional structures (LOS), in Part I the enhanced band mixing and magnetic field effects are explored in the context of the envelope function approximation. Optical nonlinearities and energy relaxation phenomena applied to the well-known systems of HgCdTe and GaAs/GaAIAs, respectively, are reviewed with comments on their extension to narrow gap LOS. The relevance of optical observations in quantum transport studies is illustrated in Part IV. A review of devices based on epitaxial narrow-gap materials defines a frame of reference for future ones based on two-dimensional narrow-gap semiconductors; in addition, an analysis of the physics of quantum well lasers provides a guide to relevant parameters for narrow-gap laser devices for the infrared (Part V). The roles and potentials of special techniques are explored in Part VI, with emphasis on hydrostatic pressure techniques, since this has a pronounced effect in small-mass, narrow-gap, non-parabolic structures."