Page 4 - Electrical Properties of Materials

Preface to the ninth edition

The major change relative to all of the previous editions is that Professor
Richard Syms of Imperial College has joined us as an author. There are new
topics added and old topics updated, but the style remains as light as ever.
Topics that needed considerable updating are semiconductor technology,
semiconductor devices, nanoelectronics, plasma etching, ferroelectric materi-
als, and spintronics.
We have been aware of many physical phenomena of interest, which we have
failed to include in the past because, in our opinion at the time, their application
prospects were not strong enough. Some of these have now come to the fore
and we have included them; they are dielectrophoresis, Raman spectroscopy,
thermoelectricity, and pyroelectricity.
We believe that one of the most important applications of the electrical
properties of materials is in the field of memory elements. We have previ-
ously described these in the respective chapters, e.g. semiconductor memories
in the chapter on semiconductor devices and magnetic memories in the chapter
on magnetism. We felt that this time, in order to emphasise their similarities
and differences, we needed to collect them into a separate chapter, which has
turned out to be an appendix. We have also added another appendix describing
the two major directions in medical imaging: computed tomography (CT) and
magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
We have to express here our gratitude to our wives who were willing to put
up with the long hours we spent bringing this edition up to date.