Applied Physics was founded in 1973 and is one of the leading international, peer-reviewed journals in the area of experimental and theoretical investigations in applied research and materials science. It appears monthly in issues of varying size.   Applied Physics A publishes regular articles, rapid communications, and invited papers about new results, focusing on the condensed phase including nanostructured materials and their applications. In addition to those about surfaces and thin films, papers on advanced processing and characterization techniques are of interest for the readers of this journal. The high print quality ensures excellent reproduction of photographs obtained in fields such as scanning probe microscopy. Instructions for authors are found at http://springer.com/00339, then click on Submission guidelines Applied Physics A: Materials Science & Processing offers a fast publication schedule whilst maintaining rigorous peer review; all articles must be submitted online, and peer review is managed fully electronically (articles are distributed in PDF form, which is automatically generated from the submitted files). Articles will be published with their final citation after acceptance, in both fully browsable web form, and as a formatted PDF. Extensive reference linking is also provided through CrossRef and other services. The table of contents and the abstracts are accessible free of charge. The full text and references with reference linking are accessible to subscribers.