Book excerpt: As the demands put on the polymer/metal interface, particularly by the microelectronics industry, become more and more severe, the necessity for understanding this interface, its properties and its limitations, becomes more and more essential. This requires a broad knowledge of, and a familiarity with, the latest findings in this rapidly advancing field. At the very least, such familiarity requires an exchange of infonnation, particularly among those intimately involved in this field. Communications among many of us in this area have made one fact quite obvious: the facilities provided by existing organizations, scientific and otherwise, do not offer the forum necessary to accomplish this exchange of infonnation. It was for this reason that Jean-Jacques Pireaux, Steven Kowalczyk and I organized the first Metallization of Polymers, a symposium sponsored by the American Chemical Society, which took place in Montreal, September 25-28, 1989; the Proceedings from that symposium were published as ACS Symposium Series 440, (1990). It is this same per ceived lack of a proper forum, and the encouragement of my colleagues, that prompted me to organize this meeting, so as to bring to the attention of the participants new instruments, materials, methods, advances, and, particularly, thoughts in the field of polymer metalliza tion. The meeting was designed as a workshop, with time being made available throughout for discussion and for the consideration of new findings.