This special-topic volume, Advances in Electronic Materials, covers various fields of materials research such as silicon, silicon-germanium hetero-structures, high-k materials, III-V semiconductor alloys and organic materials, as well as nano-structures for spintronics and photovoltaics. It begins with a brief summary of the formative years of microelectronics; now the keystone of information technology.The latter remains one of the most important global technologies, and is an extremely complex subject-area. Although electronic materials are primarily associated with computers, the internet and mobile telephones, they are used in many other applications which improve our overall quality of life. The progress made in traditional scientific fields now often depends upon new developments in electronic materials.The second article summarises some basic requirements and applications of future material systems, and their strong links to economics. New hetero-structure device concepts will be the basis for further improvements in micro- and optoelectronics and are described in detail in the following chapter. High-k (permittivity) materials play an important role in down-scaling metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors and dynamic random access memories, and the next article therefore presents a detailed study of the electrical properties of thin high-k dielectric films; paying particular attention to the strong impact of macroscopic, microscopic and atomic-size defects upon leakage currents and the reliability of gate stacks. Non-volatile memories currently represent a large proportion of the semiconductor market and are one of the most important technologies for mobile applications; . the main end-product being the flash memory.Another chapter describes in detail the future prospects for nano-electronics and nano-spintronics by considering,

in particular, nano-architecture and scalability issues. The penultimate chapter covers future materials perspectives with regard to organic materials: recently developed so as to operate as the active semiconductor in a wide range of semiconductor devices, including field-effect transistors and photovoltaic diodes. The final chapter reviews, among other things, the impact of nano-materials upon photovoltaic power generation. This work is therefore an incomparably thorough review of the subject.