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).