Semiconductor Interfaces: Atomic Abruptness, Smoothness, Optical Properties and Interdiffusion

Modern materials and device concepts are based increasingly on the tailoring of electronic properties to specific applications, by the fabrication of epitaxial multi-layered structures, with many interfaces. In many cases the band-gap discontinuity at heterointerfaces is exploited to confine charge carriers, which then manifest a spectacular array of novel low-dimensional phenomena. Heterointerfaces are thus fundamental, rather than incidental to modern semiconductor physics and materials science.