Katsutoshi Izumi received an M.S. degree in electrical engineering from Nagoya Institute of Technology in 1972 and a Ph.D. degree in electronics from Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1988. After joining the Musashino Electrical Communication Laboratory, NTT, in 1972, he performed research mainly on SOI technology for CMOS LSIs. He invented the SIMOX in 1976, and succeeded in fabricating CMOS/SIMOX ICs for the first time in 1978. He is presently working in the field of a new composite semiconductor material for Electron-Photon-Merged devices as a professor in the Research Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at Osaka Prefecture University.

Peter L.F. Hemment, B.Sc., Ph.D., D.Sc., Eur.Ing., C.Phys., C.Eng., F.Inst.P., FIEE, MIEEE. Professor Peter Hemment has more than 30 years' experience in silicon technology with special emphasis on the role of ion beams both for the modification and analysis of semiconductors and related materials. During the 1980s he initiated and managed projects to develop the process of ion beam synthesis and is internationally recognised for his contributions to SOI/SIMOX technology. He focused upon understanding the physics and chemistry of oxygen implanted silicon. With colleagues he pioneered the use of very high temperature anneals to achieve complete phase separation leading to the creation of planar structures which transformed SIMOX materials from being a scientific novelty to an economically viable manufacturing technology. Subsequently he has researched multilayer and non-continuous SOI structures together with the synthesis of SiGe and SiGeC layers. He collaborates with academic and industrial groups and keenly promotes international cooperation.

Atsushi Ogura received B.S., M.S., and Ph.D degrees from Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, in 1982, 1984, and 1991, respectively. He joined Fundamental Research Laboratories, NEC Corporation, Kawasaki, Japan, where he has been engaged in the research on fabrication and evaluation of SOI materials. He was a Visiting Researcher at AT&T Bell Laboratories, NJ, from 1992 to 1994. He left NEC in 2004, and presently he is an associate professor of Meiji University.

Harold J. Hovel received his Ph.D. degree from Carnegie Mellon University in 1968. He joined the IBM T.J.Watson Research Center in 1968 and is currently a Research Staff Member at the IBM laboratory. His research has been in the area of semiconductor materials, characterisation, and devices, including III-V compounds and integrated circuit processing, heterojunction devices, solar cells of many types, Si materials characterisation, and optical metrology. He has worked on silicon-on-insulator materials since 1990 including both bonded SOI and SIMOX, strained Si, silicon-germanium, and combinations of these materials. He is the author of 80 papers, 30 patents, and a number of review articles in both solar energy and SOI materials.

Devendra K. Sadana received his Ph.D. in Physics from Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi (India), in 1975. He subsequently joined the University of Oxford, England, as a Research Fellow and worked on ion implanted silicon and gallium arsenide from 1975 to 1979. He worked on similar material systems at University of California, Berkeley from 1979 to 1983. Dr Sadana became engaged in characterisation of processed silicon, silicon devices and ICs from 1983 to 1987 at Microelectronics Center of North Carolina, Research Triangle Park, NC, and Philips Research Lab in Sunnyvale CA. He joined IBM Research in 1987 and has since been working very closely with IBM's product divisions on a variety of issues pertaining to silicon and SOI technologies. He is presently a Senior Technical Staff Member and heads a group of material scientists, physicists and electrical engineers to develop materials and processes for IBM's future generation CMOS technologies. He holds 33 patents, has published over 120 technical articles in refereed journals and proceedings, has written six book chapters, and has given numerous invited talks and industrial courses in the last three decades of his scientific career. He received IBM's corporate award on SOI CMOS technology in 2001.

Maria J. Anc is currently a Staff Scientist at Axcelis Technologies Inc. in Beverly, MA. She has worked on SIMOX technology process development and materials characterisation when employed by Ibis Technology Corp. in Danvers, MA, from 1990 to 2001. Earlier, she worked as a research scientist for the Microsensors Research Center at the Foxboro Co, Foxboro, MA, and Massachussetts Microelectronics Center in Westborough, MA. She has an M.S. degree in electronics from the Technical University of Warsaw and a Ph.D. degree from the Institute of Electron Technology in Warsaw, Poland. She has more than 40 technical publications in the solid-state-electronics field and holds 2 patents. She is a member of the APS, MRS and IEEE.