First and foremost I thank all the people from the Institut für Mikroelektronik not only for providing insight and comprehensive explanations to their many fields of expertise but also for their company and friendship. Among all these people I owe special gratitude to my advisor, Professor Siegfried Selberherr. It has been my extreme good fortune to be involved with the research program he directs, to be mixed up in the worldwide network he had created, and seeing his way to address people, projects, and problems. Thus, he had built up an institute with an excellent working atmosphere, organized in the best way imaginable in order to keep away every needless administrative hassle from his researchers -- me among them -- and granting a huge free space dedicated to their scientific and personal development. The work at the Institut für Mikroelektronik and the guidance by my advisor added a valuable facet to my understanding how the world works. I am also grateful to Professor Wolfgang Fallmann who was willing to serve on my examining committee.
I would also like to express my thanks to the people from LSI Logic Corporation, Milpitas, California: Foremost to Sheldon Aronowitz who during my two summer internships made me feel a full member of his group and who with often nothing more than a simple but tricky question has contributed in countless and varied ways to this work and my personal development. At the same time I owe gratitude to Valeriy Sukharev who brought his wealth of experience to my education in more ways than he may know and who always bridled my impatience and taught me to start from the beginning. Finally Helmut Puchner supported me in my struggles with the hostile world of computers which outside the area protected by our system administrators seemed to behave completely different. Moreover he knew best about places like New Brighton Beach and the Riga Bakery.
I am very grateful to Austria Mikro Systeme International AG, Unterpremstätten, Austria, as well as to the Christian Doppler Forschungsgesellschaft, Wien, Austria for supporting my studies and furthermore to SONY Corporation, Atsugi Technology Center for the cooperation and the supply of experimental results.
Concerning the technical discussions and contributions to my thesis I am indebted to Ernst Strasser who with his doctoral thesis had laid the foundations for this work, to Rui Martins for the introduction to layout tools, to Mustafa Radi, Ernst Leitner, and Bernhard Haindl for the assistance concerning AMIGOS, to Peter Fleischmann for granting me support with his meshing tool, to Helmut Puchner for the discussions about the modeling of diffusion, and finally to Robert Kosik for the mathematical discussions.
Weiters geht mein Dank an Renate Winkler, Ewald Haslinger und Manfred Katterbauer. Die Selbstverständlichkeit und Verläßlichkeit, mit der sie sich den organisatorischen und administrativen Aufgaben am Institut widmen, hätte mich beinahe übersehen lassen, wie wertvoll und angenehm ihre Unterstützung immer wieder war.
Of all my colleagues I want to express special thanks to Heinrich Kirchauer for his tutorial introduction to the institute, for his hints and critical questioning when decisions had to be made, and for his unflappable believe that he still is the better badminton player. To my roommates Andi Hössinger for ignoring my endless talks on the telephone and to Rui Martins, who by learning German from me (imagine!) forced me to work on my ``akkcent''. To Rainer Sabelka for not only fixing computer problems but also for his understandable explanations, which prevented him from being bothered twice with one and the same problem. I always had to find new ones, and I did! To Christian Troger and Tom Binder for ``nett working''. To Christian Harlander, Johann Cervenka, and Rainer Sabelka because they were True64ly helpful as system administrators. They have set up a computing environment working better than everything else I have seen so far. And I have seen quite a few! And not to forget I'd like to thank them for their company at the ``blue nose''.
With Klaus ``Dr.agosits'' I had lots of funny talks and discussions. I always appreciated his freshness in mind and head and that, by his stories at the verge of truthfulness, as already recognized by Peter Fleischmann, he enforced my attentiveness in listening and thinking. The company and friendship of Peter Fleischmann was always a pleasure to me. He shared with me all the ups and downs of many Japanese movies and he always kept ready to solace me with a considerably nourishing waffle. Last but not least, if he would not have shared his computational experience and curiosity with me, I would not even know, that transparent xterms really do exist!
Ein nicht unbeträchtlicher Anteil am Entstehen dieser Dissertation geht auf das Konto meiner Schwester Elisabeth. Wenn sie bei meiner Sponsionsfeier nicht darauf bestanden hätte, daß sie jetzt auch bei meiner Promotionsfeier dabei sein will, hätte ich ja nie im Leben eine Dissertation angefangen.
I can't deny that I owe much to Caro, who forced me to learn so many things about myself. She made me the present of Stella-Jo who opened my eyes for the miracle of life.
A not always easy but true and faithful for sure companion on my way deserves recognition at the very end of this long list, Stefan Thurner. He shared my excitement of discovering the most subtle finesses and jokes in opera scores but he is also the one who had the toughest questions for me and who never was tired of searching for contradictions in my answers. Giving me also hard times, he never exceeded the borderline and thus made it to become and to remain part of my family.
Zu guter letzt möchte ich meinen Eltern und Tante Vroni Danke für ihre Unterstützung sagen. Sie sind mir auf meinem Weg bedingungslos zur Seite gestanden, haben an den Weggabelungen immer einen guten Vorschlag für die weitere Richtung gehabt und waren trotzdem nie böse, wenn ich eine andere gewählt habe. Danke für das Vertrauen und die vielen Tafeln Schokolade.
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