Driving factors for attracting creative knowledge workers in the Amsterdam metropolitan area. The views of high-skilled employees, managers and transnational migrants

This report is a synthesis of three previous studies which analysed the attractiveness of the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area (AMA) for three groups: creative knowledge workers and graduates, managers in selected creative knowledge industries and transnational migrants in the creative knowledge industry who are working in the creative knowledge sectors. The studies were conducted between July 2007 and December 2008. One of the main aims of all three studies was to tease out of the proposed growing importance of the creative knowledge workers goes in hand with a change of the evaluation of the location factors in metropolitan regions. Florida proposed in his books a presentation that Amsterdam can be seen as a model for the future development. It is a compact city which oriented towards cycling. It has one of the highest shares of foreign population. Looking at the path development of Amsterdam, we also expected that the AMA would score high on soft factors like tolerance and diversity. The results, however, bring other points to the fore. Still, the labour market is reported to be the most important factor. This is followed by other hard factors such as the availability of educational institutions and the situation of the housing market. The latter, however, works as a push factor. Since not all creative knowledge workers can be conceived as affluent and especially starters, creative workers and also some groups of transnational migrants (PhDstudents) receive about average income, some groups of the creative knowledge workers are sensitive in this respect. The housing market in Amsterdam in particular is divided between a large, inexpensive social housing segment which is not accessible for most of the average earning creative knowledge workers and a small segment of expensive private sectors housing. The evaluation of the soft factors showed that soft factors alone hardly motivate creative knowledge workers to accommodate in Amsterdam. Also the named soft factors often vary between the groups. Unexpectedly, the importance of personal trajectories and personal networks was often reported as one of the most important reasons to live, work and stay in the AMA. Florida appears to construct our temporary society as fluent and he portrays the individuals as socially and spatially independent. The results of the studies however show that the embeddedness of persons in a local and regional life world with strong personal ties is a more accurate portrayal of the contemporary society in the AMA

Transition from internal to external oxidation in indium-silver alloys

The kinetics of oxidation of In-Ag alloys of 5,10, and 15 at. % indium have been studied on a vacuum microbalance. The 15 at. % indium alloy oxidizes externally and the 5 at. % alloy internally. A plot of logarithm of the parabolic oxidation rate, kp, versus reciprocal of the absolute temperature for 10 at. % indium alloy gives two intersecting straight lines corresponding to the energies of activation of 23 and 39.6 kcal/mole for the oxidation below and above 600°C respectively. These are comparable to the energies of activation of 23 kcal/mole for the internal oxidation of 5 at. % indium alloy and 40 kcal/mole for the external oxidation of 15 at. % indium alloy. The rate-controlling step in the external oxidation of 15 at. % indium alloy is the diffusion of indium through the alloy. Photomicrographs of the cross sections of the oxidized foils of these alloys confirm the conclusions derived from the kinetic data

Germanium for high performance MOSFETs and optical interconnects

It is believed that to continue the scaling of silicon CMOS innovative device structures and new materials have to be created in order to continue the historic progress in information processing and transmission. Recently germanium has emerged as a viable candidate to augment Si for CMOS and optoelectronic applications. In this work we will first review recent results on growth of thin and thick films of Ge on Si, technology for appropriate cleaning of Ge, surface passivation using high-κ dielectrics, and metal induced crystallization of amorphous Ge and dopant activation. Next we will review application of Ge for high performance MOSFETs. Innovative Si/Ge MOS heterostructures will be described with high on current and low off currents. Finally we will describe optical detectors and modulators for on-chip and off-chip interconnect. Successful integration of Ge on Si should allow continued scaling of silicon CMOS to below 22 nm node. ©The Electrochemical Society