Organized into three sections this text aims to give an insight into this area of electronic materials activity. The first section covers the growth of materials from the earliest, though still used, bulk techniques, through to the more recent epitaxial techniques, based on both liquid and gas phases, and includes the recent area of low dimensional solids and the novel concepts which arise from them; the second section discusses the properties of the materials which make them useful for various applications such as optical, transport, doping, defects, diffusion, structural and the interfacial and surface effects; and a devices section which encompasses the major fields of infrared detection and emission, by several device types, and the expanding areas of solar cell production and room temperature detection of X-rays and gamma-rays.
