European Epitaxy Workshop took place in Lapland
The 17th European Molecular Beam Epitaxy Workshop, Euro-MBE, took place on March 10-13, 2013, in Levi – a beautiful skiing resort in Finnish Lapland. The conference was organized by the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) of Tampere University of Technology (TUT).
The Euro-MBE Workshop (www.eurombe.eu) is the premier meeting of the European MBE community and takes place every second year. Molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) is a state-of-the-art fabrication method for semiconductors.
"The main scope of the conference is to ensure an open forum for discussing the latest advances related to MBE technology, epitaxy of novel materials, and related applications, all of these being key research directions also at ORC," says Prof. Mircea Guina from ORC. He acted as the General Chair of the conference.
"The Workshop is also an excellent networking forum between research community and the MBE industry," Prof. Guina explains. "We aimed at strengthening the sense of community by offering a comprehensive coverage of MBE research topics and providing a forum where the latest developments and controversial results could be discussed in an open collegial atmosphere."
Prof. Guina views the conference as a great success. It attracted 191 participants from 23 countries, mostly from within EU but also from outside Europe.
This year the conference program included several modifications and additions. "For the first time, we had one day dedicated for short courses for students, which proved to be popular," Prof. Guina says. "The technical progam was more varied, including separate sessions for hot topics such as epitaxy of graphene, GaN optoelectronics and site-controlled epitaxy," he explains.
The number of invited speakers was also higher than in previous conferences, ensuring a high quality and diversity of the presentations. According to Prof. Guina, another novelty was the technical session, where the sponsoring companies had the opportunity to give short presentations about their products.
While organizing a conference in an outstanding venue is a must, choosing Levi brought also additional challenges for the organizers. "Not all details can be personally checked beforehand, which produced some surprises to us," explains Dr. Soile Suomalainen, the main organizer of the workshop. However, she says that the effort was worth it as the participants were very impressed by Levi and overall organization support. Testimony to this are the numerous messages received from participants that praised the overall experience.
The next Euro-MBE Workshop will be organized in Canazei, Italy, in 2015.
For more information, see the Euro-MBE 2013 website, or contact Prof. Mircea Guina or Dr. Soile Suomalainen.