**5. Characterization techniques used for the evaluation of material properties**

The increase of scientific discoveries and new technologies has impact in material science widening the choice of materials or smart materials (such as shape memory polymer, shape memory alloy, and hydrogels) to be used in semiconductors. It is important as pointed out by Reference 27 to consider environmental, moral, and ethical aspects when we choose materials in any product, service, or system [27]. The main properties to characterize them are as follows:


To evaluate which element gives the best properties or the desired properties mentioned above for a given product, there are several characterization techniques. The main parameters that differ one method from the other are resolution or detection limit (of the order of nm), physical basis (scattering, emission of electrons…), material sensitivity (linked to refractive index or atomic number), environment of testing (vacuum, air, liquid), and measured parameters (size, shape, morphology, composition…) that we want to extract and analyze. Some good reference to each method is given in [27, 28]. In this short chapter, we will limit to mention some of the most used characterization techniques and basic utility and working mechanism:

