Introduction to Crystal Growth and Characterization

Professor Emeritus Klaus-Werner Benz was Head of the Crystallographic Institute of the University of Freiburg, Germany, and Director at the Freiburg Materials Research Center until September 2003. From 1999 on he served as Vice-President of the University of Freiburg for Communication Technologies and Science Transfer. He is a member of the International Academy of Astronautics and has authored more than 300 publications in the field of material science, crystal growth and characterization, semiconductor technology and fluid dynamics. Wolfgang Neumann is Professor of Crystallography at the Institute of Physics of the Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany. He studied mineralogy in Berlin and obtained his Ph.D. and Habilitation degrees in Applied Physics from the Martin Luther University in Halle-Wittenberg. Since 1997, he is Editor-in-Chief of Crystal Research and Technology. He became Director of the International Centre of Advanced Materials and Electron Microscopy in 2001 and serves as Chairman of the German Society for Crystallography since 2006. His research interests focus on crystallography, materials science and electron microscopy. He performs structure investigations of nanostructured materials by means of analytical high-resolution electron microscopy. Wolfgang Neumann (Editor-in-Chief) and Klaus W. Benz (Consulting Editor) have collaborated for many years as main scientific editors of the materials science journal "Crystal Research and Technology".