The industrial relevance of SiGe has increased dramatically in the last few years with the manufacture of heterojunction bipolar circuits for the commercial wireless and datacomms markets by IBM and TEMIC, with over 20 companies planning manufacture in the near future. Major high technology companies see the development and use of SiGe as an important part of their strategy, so that there is a strong impetus to improve its characterization and exploitation. This liberally illustrated and fully indexed volume distils in a homogeneous, structured way the expertise of some 40 invited authors to comprehensively review the whole range of properties as well as SiGe:C, self-assembled nanostructures, quantum effects and device trends. The book contains 75% more text than Prof. Kasper's earlier book Properties of strained and relaxed SiGe (INSPEC, IEE, 1995), thoroughly updates its content and adds many new topics.