In an era marked by the ‘technologization’ of modern warfare and the privatization of military supply chains, numerous items possess dual-use potential, capable of serving both civilian and military ends. Concurrently, governments increasingly view the acquisition of specific goods, materials, services, and technologies by rival states as a threat to their security. As a result, economic restrictions imposed on dual-use items, including export controls, have proliferated in recent years. These measures have elicited concerns regarding disguised protectionism and potential non-compliance with trade agreements. Central to the debate is the difficulty to strike a balance between addressing legitimate security imperatives and preventing economic protectionism. This article delves into the intersection of trade and security in the regulation of dual-use goods. It offers a focused examination of Article XXI(b)(ii) of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) concerning trade restrictions on products destined for military use. The paper first reveals limitations of this provision in governing the regulation of dual-use items. Furthermore, it introduces the concept of a ‘purpose test’ provided by the provision as a safeguard against abusive invocation. Lastly, it sheds light on the challenge posed by the standard of proof issue, which complicates the review and mitigation of bad-faith invocations of security exceptions.

The EU’s policies in the field of technology broadly defined are increasingly marked by a concern over strategic autonomy, and Europe’s place in the world. Regulatory interventions are framed in terms of “digital sovereignty,” with the Commission seeking to ensure that external dependencies are reduced with the aim of increasing the EU’s resilience to geopolitical instability and external shocks. Using the case study of semiconductors, the chips that power modern electronic devices, this article explores how technology policy in the EU sits at the economy–security nexus, in which economic goals and security goals are interdependent and inseparable. Focusing on the life cycle of the semiconductor supply chain from the control over natural resources through to the cybersecurity requirements placed on the finished products, this article demonstrates the increasing security logic embedded within a burgeoning industrial technology policy.

The extensive narrative of growth and development of the information and communication technologies (ICTs) in China by Jiang and Murmann (2022) and the discussion of Chinese strengths and weaknesses portray the remarkable progress that China has made, especially in technology relative to advances in the basic sciences. In our response, we situate their contribution in the larger context of Chinese economic growth and the challenges it faces in transforming these accomplishments into an embedded national capability to become a leading innovation economy and thereby deliver prosperity to its enormous but aging population. The contexts for the successes and weaknesses in ICT that Jiang and Murmann (2022) describe so admirably are vital for a more comprehensive understanding of their place in the overall development of China.

To stimulate a debate about the rise of China's digital economy, this essay compares China and the US in one key area of the digital economy – e-commerce and internet-based services. China still lags behind the US in internet penetration, but it distinguishes itself by building a mobile-first, fiber-intensive, and inclusive digital infrastructure. A favorable infrastructure, innovations tailored to the large Chinese market, and local firms’ rapid commercialization of products and services turned the world's largest domestic population into active online consumers, helping China overtake the US by a large margin in retail e-commerce and digital payment. While China translated digital technologies into leading business-to-customer and customer-to-customer businesses, it has not been so successful in business-to-business services. The US is still ahead in the general-purpose technologies underlying the digital economy.

The structure, powder diffraction patterns and bandgap measurements of a series of manganese- and tungsten-containing alkaline-earth double perovskites (CaxSr2−x)MnWO6 (x = 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, 1.5, 1.75) have been investigated. Powder X-ray diffraction patterns of this series of compounds measured at room temperature have been submitted to be included in the Powder Diffraction File (PDF). These compounds crystallize in monoclinic space group P21/n (No.14). From (Ca1.75 Sr0.25)MnWO6 to (Ca0.25Sr1.75)MnWO6, lattice parameters a range from 5.6729(2) Å to 5.6774(4) Å, b from 5.5160(2) Å to 5.6638(4) Å, c from 7.8741(3) Å to 8.0051(4) Å, V from 240.39(2) Å3 to 257.410(12) Å3, and Z = 2. These compounds are pseudo-tetragonal. They all consist of distorted MnO6 and WO6 octahedra with rotational mismatch angles and tilt angles with respect to each other. For (CaxSr2−x)MnWO6, as x increases, the mismatch angles for MnO6 octahedra increase from 7.96 (6)° to 13.12(8)° and from 9.28(7)° to 14.87(9)° for WO6 octahedra. Correspondingly, the tilt angles range from 11.60(15)° to 14.20(3)° for MnO6, and from 13.34(2)° to 16.35(3)° for WO6. Bandgap measurements suggest that these compounds to be direct-allowed semiconductors with bandgaps ranging from 1.5 to 2.5 eV, indicating that members of (CaxSr2−x)MnWO6 are potential photocatalysts and photovoltaic materials that absorb visible light of the solar spectrum.

The impact of secondary fluorescence on the material compositions measured by X-ray analysis for layered semiconductor thin films is assessed using simulations performed by the DTSA-II and CalcZAF software tools. Three technologically important examples are investigated: AlxGa1−xN layers on either GaN or AlN substrates, InxAl1−xN on GaN, and Si-doped (SnxGa1−x)2O3 on Si. Trends in the differences caused by secondary fluorescence are explained in terms of the propensity of different elements to reabsorb either characteristic or bremsstrahlung X-rays and then to re-emit the characteristic X-rays used to determine composition of the layer under investigation. Under typical beam conditions (7–12 keV), the quantification of dopants/trace elements is found to be susceptible to secondary fluorescence and care must be taken to prevent erroneous results. The overall impact on major constituents is shown to be very small with a change of approximately 0.07 molar cation percent for Al0.3Ga0.7N/AlN layers and a maximum change of 0.08 at% in the Si content of (SnxGa1−x)2O3/Si layers. This provides confidence that previously reported wavelength-dispersive X-ray compositions are not compromised by secondary fluorescence.

We investigated high-resistivity cadmium zinc telluride (CdZnTe):In single crystals annealed in hydrogen to reveal the passivation effect of defects. An overall reduction in the concentration of defect levels induced by annealing was obviously observed by thermally stimulated current measurements. There is a large decrease by 56.51% in the concentration of secondly ionized Cd vacancies (T3) after hydrogenation. The concentration of firstly ionized Cd vacancies (T2) was a little bit lower (17.99%) in the hydrogenated CZT crystals. The formation of neutral InH complex and lower occupation of VCd by In dopant would result in a significant decrease (68.31%) in the trap density of ${\rm In}_{\rm Cd}^ +$ related shallow donor (T1) after hydrogenation. The bulk resistivity was calculated from I–V characteristic curves to be ~1.97 × 1010 Ωcm before annealing and ~1.78 × 1010 Ωcm after annealing. Hall measurements also reveal n-type conduction for the hydrogenated crystals. Electron mobility was fitted to be about 110 cm2/Vs before annealing and 488 cm2/Vs after annealing, demonstrating better carrier transport properties. Electron mobility-lifetime product could be fitted to be about 3.60 × 10−4 cm2/V before annealing and 5.45 × 10−4 cm2/V after annealing, demonstrating better detector performances.

Layer silicates are generally assumed to be insulators, but electron transport may take place in nm thick particles. A combined scanning tunnelling-atomic force (STM-AFM) instrument using a conducting AFM tip has been constructed to investigate this conduction. Some layer silicates, e.g. micas (muscovite and biotite), are in fact semiconductors, conduction taking place through free electrons in the tetrahedral sheet (n-type semiconductivity) and probably through polaron hopping in the octahedral sheet. This implies that these minerals can be investigated by STM. Furthermore, micas show negative differential resistance (decreasing current with increasing voltage) at 2 – 5 V.

The xenon plasma focused ion beam instrument (PFIB), holds significant promise in expanding the applications of focused ion beams in new technology thrust areas. In this paper, we have explored the operational characteristics of a Tescan FERA3 XMH PFIB instrument with the aim of meeting current and future challenges in the semiconductor industry. A two part approach, with the first part aimed at optimizing the ion column and the second optimizing specimen preparation, has been undertaken. Detailed studies characterizing the ion column, optimizing for high-current/high mill rate activities, have been described to support a better understanding of the PFIB. In addition, a novel single-crystal sacrificial mask method has been developed and implemented for use in the PFIB. Using this combined approach, we have achieved high-quality images with minimal artifacts, while retaining the shorter throughput times of the PFIB. Although the work presented in this paper has been performed on a specific instrument, the authors hope that these studies will provide general insight to direct further improvement of PFIB design and applications.

In the present work, we report the development of phase pure and highly crystalline stibnite Sb2S3 nanostructures by a surfactant-mediated hydrothermal method. Polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) as the surfactant has a striking effect on the assembly of nanorods into dumbbell shaped nanorod-bundles. While nanorods with high aspect ratio were formed in absence of the surfactant, dumbbell shaped nanorod bundles were obtained using the surfactant. The structural, morphological, and optical properties were examined by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman scattering, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and UV–visible spectrophotometer. Both XRD and Raman spectroscopy confirmed the formation of orthorhombic phase pure stibnite (Sb2S3). The ratio of Sb to S is found to be close to 2:3, corresponding to Sb2S3. The optical band gap varied in the range of 1.65–1.68 eV depending on the concentration of the surfactant.

Rutile nanoparticles have been synthesized by acid hydrolysis of titanium isopropoxide by low-temperature dissolution-reprecipitation process. High-resolution transmission electron micrographs of the rutile colloidal solution show needle-shaped rutile nanoparticles with the dimensions of 10–30 nm in diameter and 100–150 nm in length. X-ray diffraction (XRD) data show the existence of only the rutile polymorph in TiO2 powder with a crystallite size of 11.3 nm. The dielectric constant of rutile nanoparticles has been found to be 57 at 10 MHz AC frequency and DC conductance as 2.3 × 10−6 S/cm. Transmission electron micrographs and XRD data analysis imply that the rutile crystallites are self-organized in a regular fashion to produce multilayer three-dimensional linear clusters. The clusters have been found to be microporous (average porosity 1.4 nm) with high specific surface area (132.2 m2/g). At higher concentration, the clusters aggregate to produce interconnected network of star- or flower-like structures. This organized crystalline microporous metal-oxide semiconductor might find various practical applications.

In an earlier publication Rosenauer et al. introduced a method for determination of composition in AlGaN/GaN heterostructures from high-angle annular dark field (HAADF) images. Static atomic displacements (SADs) were neglected during simulation of reference data because of the similar covalent radii of Al and Ga. However, SADs have been shown (Grillo et al.) to influence the intensity in HAADF images and therefore could be the reason for an observed slight discrepancy between measured and nominal concentrations. In the present study parameters of the Stillinger–Weber potential were varied in order to fit computed elastic constants, lattice parameters and bonding energies to experimental ones. A reference data set of HAADF images was simulated, in which the new parameterization was used to account for SADs. Two reference samples containing AlGaN layers with different Al concentrations were investigated and Al concentrations in the layers determined based on the new data set. We found that these concentrations were in good agreement with nominal concentrations as well as concentrations determined using alternative techniques such as strain state analysis and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy.

This article deals with the measurement of strain in semiconductor heterostructures from convergent beam electron diffraction patterns. In particular, three different algorithms in the field of (circular) pattern recognition are presented that are able to detect diffracted disc positions accurately, from which the strain in growth direction is calculated. Although the three approaches are very different as one is based on edge detection, one on rotational averages, and one on cross correlation with masks, it is found that identical strain profiles result for an InxGa1−xNyAs1−y/GaAs heterostructure consisting of five compressively and tensile strained layers. We achieve a precision of strain measurements of 7–9·10−4 and a spatial resolution of 0.5–0.7 nm over the whole width of the layer stack which was 350 nm. Being already very applicable to strain measurements in contemporary nanostructures, we additionally suggest future hardware and software designs optimized for fast and direct acquisition of strain distributions, motivated by the present studies.