Part I of this book is dedicated to the proceedings of symposium I of the EMRS 1996 Spring Meeting. This Symposium on "New Trends in Ion Beam Processing of Materials" was held in Strasbourg (France) from the 4th to the 7th of June 1996. Ion- beam processing represents a particularly powerful tool to modify and synthesise materials such as semiconductors, metals, dielectrics, and ceramics, In particular, the continuous development of the semiconductor industry, with the consequent shrinkage of device dimensions, is placing severe constraints on ion-beam processing with demands for keV and meV energy beams, high doses, and unprecedented control over contamination, beam purity, and divergence. These requirements are posing new challenges to the ion-beam community, ranging from fundamental processes (such as defect generation, defect-defect interactions, phase transitions) to engineering (such as process control and novel equipment). The aim of this Symposium was to provide an international forum for the presentation and discussion of new work in the field of ion-beam processing. More than a hundred papers were presented by scientists from all over the world. particular emphasis was given to new trends in ion-beam processing of semiconductors and to the current challenges faced by microelectronic device manufacturing. The fields of transient- enhanced diffusion, gettering, optoelectronic applications, group IV hetero epitaxy, damage, annealing, and synthesis were treated in detail. The interaction between the semiconductor and other communities is important for the development of new concepts and presentations in the field of metals, insulators, and new techniques (such as plasma-immersion ion implantation) were extremely interesting. Part II is dedicated to the proceedings of symposium K. This symposium has focused on modifications of the structure and properties of materials which are induced by several kinds of irradiations: on the one hand high energy deposited in the electrons which relax their energy to the lattice (fs lasers, heavy ions in the GeV energy range, cluster beams in the MeV range) and on the other hand energy deposited directly on the lattice atoms (heavy ions and cluster beams in the keV energy range). The idea was to emphasize the link between the material modifications on a nanometric scale and the energy input on the fs time scale from both the experimental and theoretical point of view. To reach these goals our attention was focused on single event effects: single fs laser shots, single ion and cluster tracks (low and high energy).

The Symposium on Magnetic Ultrathin Films, Multilayers and Surfaces, hosted by the European Materials Research Society, was held at the Palais de la Musique et des Congré in Strasbourg, France on June 4-7, 1996. Its central theme was the relationship of magnetic properties and device performance to structure at the nano and micrometer length scale. Research on the magnetism of surfaces, ultrathin films and multilayers has increased dramatically during recent years. This development was triggered by the discovery of coupling between ferromagnetic layers across nonmagnetic spacer layers and of the giant magnetoresistance effect in systems of reduced dimension using various micro and nanofabrication techniques has become a subject of special interest. It is certainly the promising application potential of these effects in new magnetic recording device geometries which causes this intensive research, which is done both by companies and at universities and research institutes. A selection of invited and contributed papers presented at the Symposium and accepted for publication is contained in this volume. The contents of these proceedings are organized into seven sections. A. Nanowires, Nanoparticles, Nanostructuring B. Ultrathin Films and Surfaces, Characterization C. Giant Magnetoresistance D. Coupling, Tunneling E. Growth, Structure, Magnetism F. Growth, Structure, Magnetoresistance G. Coupling, Magnetic processes, Magneto-optics. The first four sections contain invited and oral contributed papers in the listed research domains, while the last three sections contain the contributions presented during three large poster sessions.

This special issue of Carbon, a collection of reviewed papers, was presented at Symposium A, Fullerenes and Carbon Based Materials at the combined 1997 International Conference on Applied Materials/European Materials Research Society Spring meeting (ICAM'97/E-MRS'97) held in Strasbourg (France) from 16-20 June 1997. 140 presentations were given at the conference in seven different sessions. The most extensively addressed research fields were carbon materials in general, diamond-like carbon, pristine, polymeric and endohedral fullerenes, nanotubes, and carbonitrides. Of accepted manuscripts, the largest number of contributions is dedicated to carbon materials in general and to fullerenes. Highlights in the former are the discussions on hydrogen-free carbons and on hard carbon coatings. In the fullerenes group many new results on polymeric structures and on endohedrally-doped higher fullerenes are reported. The field of carbon nanotubes is strongly represented with reports on new techniques for the production of the tubes and where the analyses by scanning probe microscopy and light scattering are the central problems. Carbonitrides as well as a few contributions from related molecular materials like cubanes or oligophenylenes are included. The symposium proved to be a valuable venue where new scientific and technological problems in the field of new materials were reported.

The Symposium on 'Nitrides and related wide band gap materials' at the 1998 Spring Meeting of the European Materials Research Society (E-MRS) in Strasbourg, France, was the third Symposium of its kind at an E-MRS meeting. Beginning in 1996, these Symposia enjoyed a steadily increasing popularity among European and international nitride researchers. Contributions covered the areas of hetero-epitaxy, bulk growth, structural, electrical and optical characterisation and device fabrication. Researchers from about 20 different countries presented their work at this symposium. Naturally, most papers were from within Europe (Germany, France, Russia and the United Kingdom) but there was also a remarkable number of contributions from overseas (USA, Japan and Korea.) For about 5 years now, semiconducting group-III nitrides have attracted an enormous level of research activity all over the world. Essentially this was triggered by the breakthroughs achieved by Shuji Nakamura and his group in Japan, who succeeded in making highly efficient blue, green and yellow light emitting diodes as well as violet laser diodes based on A1GaInN. Since then, intensive research related to material growth, device development, as well as to the fundamental properties of these materials is being carried out. The outstanding contribution of Shuji Nakamura to this field was underlined by his plenary lecture during this E-MRS meeting. He presented his most recent progress towards amber LED's and long-lived violet laser diodes.

This volume contains the papers presented at Symposium B of the 1998 spring meeting of the European Materials Research Society (E-MRS). The symposium attracted well over 100 scientists engaged in one common goal - that of developing efficient light emitting Si-based structures. This included various technical approaches such as porous silicon, Si nanocrystals, rare-earth doping of Si, light emitting silicides, Si-based multilayer and alloy structures and SiGe structures. In this respect, the meeting had a more multidisciplinary approach than previous meetings, the main idea being a fruitful comparison of the different techniques that would also stimulate cross-disciplinary research. Generally, presentations at the conference revealed high scientific quality and several new findings and refinements of existing techniques were disclosed. One example was the much-debated report of optical gain from a structure containing Si nanocrystals. Another example was the dramatically improved stability of derivatised porous silicon. The technique of producing porous Si microcavities has been refined such that cavities of high optical quality may now be fabricated. The latest material to emerge as a candidate for a Si-based light emitting device has been iron silicide and room temperature operation has been reported. The interest is further motivated by the prospect of obtaining direct bandgap emission. The 90 collected papers represent about 80% of the submitted papers out of more than 140 accepted abstracts. The papers have been grouped according to subject although no ordering within each subgroup has been attempted. All invited papers have been placed in the foremost section to serve as reviews in each separate field.

The symposium entitled "New Developments in Porous Silicon. Relation with Other Nanostructured Porous Materials" took place in Strasbourg on 4-7 June 1996 hosted by the EMRS Society. Its objectives were to assess the recent developments in porous silicon research and make the 'porous Si community' more aware of related porous materials. The 71 papers contained in these proceedings account for about 80% of the work presented at the meeting and cover nine different topic areas. Chapter 1 focuses on some recent advances in porous Si fabrication and a new formation mechanism involving specific point defects, extensions to the basic anodization process for preparing macropore arrays, multilayers as well as both thin and thick high porosity layers and the realisation of luminescent porous structures from device quality &agr;-Si:H material. Controlled chemical modification of the internal surface of porous Si, an important emerging technique for both stabilising, understanding and introducing new functionality into the properties of the material is discussed in chapter 2 along with the new and exciting developments taking place in the nanocomposites area. The papers in chapter 3 discuss photochemical effects, properties of 'wet' and 'dry' porous Si layers and new approaches to characterising 'wet' material along with an important highlight of the symposium - blue emission in oxide-free layers. Chapter 4 covers many new developments and the refining of existing techniques regarding characterising porous Si and chapter 5 reviews the luminescent silicon nanostructures that have been fabricated other than anodization. The presentation of various porous materials and overviews on the fabrication characterisation and applications of porous alumina are covered in chapter 6, and chapter 7 focuses on the growing interest in porous Si multilayer structures and the potential for realising practical SiLEDs with chapter 8 covering the work that has been presented in this field. New applications for porous Si materials which has an enormous world-wide interest is discussed in the final chapter of the proceedings.