Acknowledgment

Acknowledgment

At first I want to thank my advisor Prof. Hans Kosina for giving me the opportunity to join his research group and work in the vast and amazing field of microelectronics. He took care for excellent working conditions, a calm working environment and last but not least encouraged the attendance of several scientific conferences.

Furthermore, I am indebted to Prof. Siegfried Selberherr and Prof. Erasmus Langer, the head of the Institute, for the reposeful working climate, which serves as a basis for worldclass scientific work.

During my stay at the Institute I had the pleasure to collaborate on different levels with other colleagues I have a high regard for: Oskar Baumgartner, Zlatan Stanojevic, Thomas Windbacher, Martin Vasicek, Johann Cervenka, Paul-Juergen Wagner, Otmar Ertl, Philipp Hehenberger, Gregor Meller, Karl Rupp, Franz Schanovsky, Stanislav Vitanov, and Viktor Sverdlov as well as those I apologize not to mention here. I want to express my warmest thanks also to the administration staff, namely Manfred Katterbauer, Ewald and Christoph Haslinger, and to Renate Winkler.

This work was supported in part by the Austrian Science Fund FWF, special research program IR-ON, project F2509.

Last but not least, I want to thank my family. My parents made possible all of my studies by their continuous support.