The use of materials based on their mechanical behavior has moderated key aspects of the development of civilization. Starting perhaps with stone and wood, used more or less in forms provided directly by nature, progressing to the ferrous metallurgies that gave birth to the entire industrial revolution, and continuing with today's exotic high-strength, light-weight alloys and composites, materials have frequently been selected to fulfill the structural engineering needs of designers, builders, and inventors. Following these trends, studies of the mechanical behavior of solids, once the exclusive purview of blacksmiths and artisans, came to occupy the attention of scientists and engineers worldwide, and were foundational to the modern discipline of materials science and engineering.

In this issue of the MRS Bulletin, we have selected five articles that highlight the intellectual coupling of traditional mechanical behavior investigations with the use of materials in thin film forms. Such a coupling is not entirely new. In an ASM-sponsored seminar held in 1963, for instance, one of the papers presented was entitled simply “Mechanical Properties of Thin Films.” Within the last decade, however, and due largely to developments within the microelectronic and magnetic disk industries, awareness of the need to predict, control, and understand the mechanical behavior of thin film media has grown rapidly. Many of the most important failure mechanisms operative in integrated circuits, for example, such as stress and electromigration voiding, are mechanical in nature.