These proceedings contain the majority of papers presented at
Symposium D, "Group IV heterostructures, physics and devices
(Si, Ge, C,&agr;-Sn)," of the Spring Meeting of the European
Materials Research Society, held at the Congress Centre,
Strasbourg, France, 4-7 June 1996. This Symposium was attended
by about 150 scientists from throughout the world, among whom 18
were invited speakers.

The aim of the Symposium was to discuss
the most recent results in all fields of Group IV
heterostructures and devices from fundamental physics to
industrial applications. Regular and invited contributions were
then welcomed which addressed the different aspects of growth,
the effects of strain relaxation, particularly in SiGeC alloys,
the basic optical and electrical properties of heterostructures
and low-dimensional structures, the microelectronic and
optoelectronics, such as rare-earth doping techniques, was also
selected. Except for minor changes, the order of papers presented
in this special issue of Thin Solid Films closely follows the
order of topics listed above as well as the order of sessions at
the Symposium.