A NATO Advanced Study Institute on "Large Scale Integrated Circuits Technology: State of the Art and Prospects" was held at Ettore Majorana Centre for Scientific Culture, Erice (Italy) on July 15-27, 1981, the first course of the International School of Solid-State Device Research. This volume contains the School Proceedings: fundamentals as well as up-to-date information on each subject presented by qualified authors. The material covered in this volume has been arranged in self-consistent chapters. Therefore, the Proceedings may be used as a suitable textbook or authoritative review for research workers and advanced students in the relevant field. The nascent information society is based on advanced technologies which will revolutionize human abilities to manipulate and communicate information. One of the most important underpinnings for developing such an information society lies in innovations in semiconductor microelectronics. Such innova­ tions, indeed, are dramatically reducing the cost of transmitting, storing, and processing information with improved performance, ushering in an era charac­ terized by large scale integration -the subject of this book.