This issue of physica status solidi (a) contains selected papers presented in Symposium B, “Flexible and Transparent Electronics: From Materials to Devices”, at the European Materials Research Society Fall Meeting held in Warsaw, Poland, September 15–18, 2008.It was the third meeting in Europe covering this topic and the fi rst realized in the Fall meeting of E-MRS. It was attended by scientists from 27 different coun-tries, with strong presence especially from Japan and the Republic of South Korea (11% and 8% of the total of papers presented, respectively).

The symposium programme consisted of eight invited talks, 27 oral presentations and 37 poster presentations, in a total of 72 contributions, among which 17 were se-lected for publication in this issue, representing nearly 24% of the presented communications.

Topics ranging from the fundamental understanding of physical phenomena to materials and devices were covered in the symposium, with special emphasis on the following ones:

– Materials and processing for transparent electronics– Characterization and modelling– New devices (nano, micro and macro)– New applications.

The success of this symposium was the result of the contributions of many dedicated people. It is a pleasure for me to thank the symposium organizers (Professors C. Granqvist, Sweden; M. Hirano, Japan and G. Kiriakidis, Greece) for their availability and help

during the preparation and follow up of this meeting as well as all the individual referees, who donated their time to help make this selection of papers a successful and scientifi c strong contribution for the international community working in the fi eld of fl exible and trans-parent electronics. I would also like to thank the three voluntary symposium assistants (L. Pereira, P. Barquinha and G. Gonçalves) who helped before, during and after the symposium, and especially G. Gonçalves who played a key role during the fi nal compilation process of the papers accepted for publication.

Since the work necessary to edit this special section was not limited to what was done before and during the conference, I also would like to acknowledge the detailed, delicate and long work done after the meeting in close cooperation with Dr. Stefan Hildebrandt and the physica status solidi Editorial Offi ce.

I would like also to thank the E-MRS Fall Meeting staff (Agnieszka Rytel) for the support given for the success of this symposium.

I also gratefully acknowledge the fi nancial support of our main sponsors who made the symposium possible:

– FCT-UNL, Portugal– Uninova, Portugal– Multifl exioxides European project (NMP3-CT-

2006-032231).

Rodrigo Martins (Guest Editor)Cemop/Uninova, Campus de Caparica, Portugal

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Phys. Status Solidi A 206, No. 9, 2121 (2009) / DOI 10.1002/pssa.200881800

© 2009 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

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