Lasers at the frontiers of materials science and engineering

Largely in response to the need for more sophisticated materials processing in advanced microelectronics and optoelectronics, lasers have been used for an increasingly wide variety of applications and basic studies in materials science. The authors provide an overview of this field with particular emphasis on four areas of application: fabrication and processing; growth of materials; the study of surface and interfacial phenomena; and the studies of basic physics of new materials grown by other than optical techniques