Dramatic advances in the processing of novel materials and devices have created a rapidly growing demand for improved methods for their characterization. In particular, burgeoning research efforts in nanotechnology, striving to create systems with drastically reduced spatial dimensions, rely heavily on a comprehensive analytical examination during successive levels of development. In such nanosized entities, many of the decisive properties may differ pronouncedly from those in larger systems and, rather characteristically, surfaces and interfaces play a crucial, if not dominant, role in their functionality.
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