Pattern transfer by dry etching and plasma-enhanced chemical vapor de position are two of the cornerstone techniques for modern integrated cir cuit fabrication. The success of these methods has also sparked interest in their application to other techniques, such as surface-micromachined sen sors, read/write heads for data storage and magnetic random access memory (MRAM). The extremely complex chemistry and physics of plasmas and their interactions with the exposed surfaces of semiconductors and other materi als is often overlooked at the manufacturing stage. In this case, the process is optimized by an informed "trial-and-error" approach which relies heavily on design-of-experiment techniques and the intuition of the process engineer. The need for regular cleaning of plasma reactors to remove built-up reaction or precursor gas products adds an extra degree of complexity because the interaction of the reactive species in the plasma with the reactor walls can also have a strong effect on the number of these species available for etching or deposition. Since the microelectronics industry depends on having high process yields at each step of the fabrication process, it is imperative that a full understanding of plasma etching and deposition techniques be achieved.

This volume (Parts A and B) contains the edited papers presented at the annual Review of Progress in Quan?itative Nondestructive Evalua tion held at the University of California (San Diego) in LaJo11a, August 3-8, 1986. The Review was organized and sponsored by the Center for NDE at Iowa State University and the Ames Laboratory, in cooperation with the Office of Basic Energy Sciences, USDOE, and the Materia1s Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Approximately 400 attendees, a new record, representing various government agencies, industry, and universities participated in the technical presentations, poster sessions, and discussions. This Review, with its wide-ranging interchange of technical information, stands as one of the most compre hensive in the field of NDE research and engineering. In order to present the reader with a more usefu1 document, we have organized the symposium papers in these Proceedings by subject rather than by the order of presentation at the Review. Topical subject headings have been selected under which the 1arge majority of papers wou1d reasonably falI. Here, again, we have revised the format used in former years to accommodate an evolving focus of interest in the field. These categories cover a broad spectrum of research in NDE and encompass activities from fundamental work to early engineering applications. In the following paragraphs we offer a brief summary of the research presented in these Proceedings.