Symposium Z, 'Oxide Semiconductors', and Symposium F, 'Oxide Thin Films for Renewable Energy Applications', were held November 25-30 at the 2012 MRS Fall Meeting in Boston, Massachusetts. Oxide materials are attracting considerable attention both as semiconductors for a wide range of potential device applications but also in energy research spanning from photo- and electro-catalysis, to electrolytes and electrodes used in batteries or fuel cells. This symposium proceedings volume collects recent reports from the meeting aimed at providing a fundamental understanding of bulk oxide materials as well as thin films and nano-structures. The topics covered in this volume are quite broad and include such areas as growth and doping, defects and characterisation, and device applications.

This volume includes a collection of papers presented in Symposium TT, Laser-Material Interactions at Micro/Nanoscales, at the Spring 2011 Materials Research Society Meeting held April 2011 in San Francisco, California. Laser-material interactions are of fundamental importance in a wide range of materials-related research and areas of technology, including green energy, photonics, electronics, environmental studies, biomedical imaging, medical treatment, and optical spectroscopy. This symposium provided an interdisciplinary forum for scientists and engineers from different fields to discuss the physical, chemical, thermal, and mechanical phenomena that occur during laser-material interactions at micro and nano scales. Research addressing new materials, processes, structures, and surfaces synthesized by these methods for emerging fields was discussed. The symposium was well attended and received a large number of abstract submissions in the areas of ultrafast laser processing, laser ablation and deposition, process controls, nanomaterials, surface modification, laser materials interactions, polymerization, lithography, and novel approaches in laser processing.