Hokkaido University plays a core role for the following two projects in this tutorial paper, ① the development of diamond semiconductor devices for nuclear plants, which can survive severe accidents are described. ② the development of an elemental technology for a field-portable energy discrimination and position sensitive alpha-particle measurement system. The item ① is an effort to develop diamond semiconductor devices that can be used inside nuclear reactor containments, which require very severe demand performance in radiation and heat resistance. Although the project is in progress, a diamond field emission transistor, which stably operates at 500 degrees C, has been developed. In addition, diamond radiation detectors will soon satisfy the performance demands of operation at 300 degrees C, an accumulated dose of 5 MGy and a dynamic range of 7 digits. ② is the development of an elemental technology for a scintillator-base field-portable energy discrimination and position sensitive alpha-particle measurement system that finds alpha-particles from nuclear fuel, e.g., ²³⁸Pu, in a high gamma and beta-ray background. As a result, the developed system succeeded in identifying 0.37 Bq of Pu within 5 minutes in an environment where the existence ratio between the Pu and Radon progeny nuclei was 1:100. The foundation of these two projects is the development of environmentally resistant materials for high radiation and high temperatures.

Development of diamond growth technique to fabricate large-scale and high-quality wafer is necessary in order to use diamond as semiconductor and optical material. Since diamond epitaxial growth on epitaxial Ir surface was reported by Aoyama Gakuin University Inuzuka laboratory in 1995, various techniques have been developed to improve quality and to enlarge wafer size. Here we will introduce our research achievement of epitaxial diamond growth on Ir surface using direct current CVD method and will discuss about the outlook for the future.

We demonstrate the progress of gettering technology for silicon wafers. Gettering technology has been progressing for the control of contamination due to heavy metal impurities during the silicon semiconductor device processing and for the improvement of device yield.

In recent years, CMOS imaging devices have been widely used for mobile communication devices such as smartphones and tablets. However, CMOS imaging device performance is dramatically influenced by metal impurity contamination in the device process. Thus, it is extremely important to study the influence of metal impurities on device performance and to develop metal impurity gettering technology.

In this article, we report the current status of gettering technology trends for advanced CCD/CMOS imagers. In addition, we introduce our new proximity gettering technology for high sensitivity CCD/CMOS imagers by using a carbon cluster ion irradiation technique.

Recently, laser sources have been rapidly improving their performance as the laser display market has grown. Laser displays are very attractive, because of their low electric power consumption and their wide color gamut. The small etendue of laser sources is a great advantage for downsizing the laser displays and their application systems as well. Lighting applications using lasers are also recognized as being attractive, and are being affected by the evolving laser display technologies. In this article, the recent progress in laser display technologies using highly efficient lasers and their applications is introduced.

We review the photonic properties of graphene and CNT, and present our recent works on fabrications of CNT/Graphene fiber devices, and applications to ultra-short pulse mode-locked fiber lasers with an emphasis on the generation of high-repetition-rate and high-intensity short pulses, along with applications to nonlinear photonic devices.

Because the terahertz (THz) frequency region is located between the electronic and photonic bands, even basic components like detectors and sources have not been fully developed, compared to the other frequency regions. The THz wave also has the problem of low imaging resolution, which results from the two to three order of magnitude longer wavelength than that of visible light. This article reviews new types of THz sensing, spectroscopy and imaging device technologies by employing low-dimensional electron systems, such as a carbon nanotube (CNT) array, graphene, and a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) in a semiconductor heterostructure.

Photovoltaic (PV) systems have attracted much attention as one of the promising renewable energy resources. Many PV systems have been constructed in the world to produce electricity from solar power. The importance of the long-term durability of PV modules is significantly increasing to maintain and improve the total power output of the system. In this paper, we introduce the degradations of crystalline Si PV modules induced by a damp-heat (DH) test under high temperature with high humidity, and induced by a high potential (potential-induced degradation, PID), respectively. We demonstrate the degradation mechanisms and one of the promising techniques to produce low-cost DH and PID-resistant Si PV modules.

Scanning probe microscopy (SPM) is one of the indispensable techniques in science and technology. Tips for scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM), which are widely used, are introduced with a brief introduction of their operating mechanisms.