Future Trends in Microelectronics: Frontiers and Innovations

Book Preface

This book is a brainchild of the seventh workshop in the Future Trends in Microelectronics series (FTM-7). The first of the FTM conferences, “Reflections on the Road to Nanotechnology”, had gathered in 1995 on He de Bendor, a beautifu little French Mediterranean island.1 The second FTM, “Off the Beaten Path”, took place in 1998 on a larger island in the same area, He des Embiez.2 Instead of going to a still larger island, the third FTM, “The Nano Millennium”, went back to its origins on He de Bendor in 2001.3 As if to compensate for small size of Bendor, the fourth FTM, “The Nano, the Giga, the Ultra, and the Bio”, took place on the biggest French Mediterranean island of them all, Corsica.4 Normally, the FTM workshops gather every three years; however, the FTM-4 was held one year ahead of the usual schedule, in the summer of 2003, as a one-time exception. Continuing its inexorable motion eastward, the fifth FTM workshop, “Up the Nano Creek”, had convened on Crete, Greece, in June of 2006.5 The inexorable motion was then interrupted to produce a semblance of a random walk in the Mediterranean and the FTM-6 “Unmapped Roads” went to the Italian island of Sardinia (June, 2009).6 The last FTM gathering, “Into the Cross Currents”, returned to our earlier venue on Corsica (June 2012).

The FTM workshops are relatively small gatherings (less than 100 people) by invitation only. If you, the reader, wish to be invited, please consider following a few simple steps outlined on the conference website. The FTM website at www.ece.sunysb.edu/~serge/FTM.html contains links to all past and planned workshops, their programs, publications, sponsors, and participants. Our attendees have been an illustrious lot. Suffice it to say that among FTM participants we find five Nobel laureates (Zhores Alferov, Herbert Kroemer, Horst Stormer, Klaus von Klitzing, and Harold Kroto) and countless others poised for a similar distinction. To be sure, high distinction is not a prerequisite for being invited to FTM, but the ability and desire to bring fresh ideas is. All participants of FTM-7 can be considered authors of this book, which in this sense is a collective treatise.