The Sixth Polish Conference on Crystal Growth (PCCG-VI) was organised during 20-23 May 2001 in Poznań in Malta Campus, a well-known Sports and Recreation Centre situated on the northern shore of the Malta Lake. It was organised under the auspices of Polish Society for Crystal Growth jointly by the Faculty of Technical Physics of the Poznań University of Technology, and the Faculty of Physics of Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań. The scope of the conference covered the following topics: (1) bulk crystal growth, (2) growth of thick and thin films, (3) characterisation of bulk crystals and crystalline films, (4) industrial crystallisation, (5) nucleation, and (6) structure and properties of liquid crystals and electrolyte solutions.
The scientific programme consisted of contributions presented as poster and oral presentations. The topics of major interest were presented as invited lectures. In all 112 works were presented, which comprised 18 invited lectures, 13 oral presentations and 83 posters, including 4 late communications, which were not published in the abstracts book. 110 regular participants, including 34 foreign participants from Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Russian Federation, South Africa, Spain and Ukraine, attended the conference. Thus, despite its name, PCCG-VI essentially represented international atmosphere and scientific level.
It is a matter of pleasure to note that the overall number of participants in PCCG-VI was higher by about 50% than that in PCCG-V held in Nałęczów in 1998. However, the number of foreign participants was roughly double in PCCG-VI than that in PCCG-V attended by 84 participants, including 20 foreign participants.
From the 112 works presented during the conference, manuscripts of 67 articles were submitted for publication in the special issue of Crystal Research and Technology as PCCG-VI Proceedings. All the manuscripts were then refereed following a standard procedure based on the criteria of validity, significance, originality and clarity of presentation. Consequently, although the presentation of a paper by one of its authors was a necessary condition for its inclusion in this issue, according to this procedure it was not a sufficient condition because the manuscripts of several papers were outrightly rejected while many required drastic revisions. Of the 67 manuscripts, the referees approved 46 for publication. The Guest Editor received 44 manuscripts by the deadline of receipt of their final versions. These manuscripts are included in this special issue.
The following team worked as referees of the manuscripts: P. Bogusławski, G. Gładyszewski, J. Grońkowski, E. Jartych, S. Krukowski, R. Koehler, R. Kubiak, T. Łukasiewicz, H. Męczyńska, A. Misiuk, M. Oszwałdowski, A. Piotrowska, W. Polak, A. Rogalski, K. Sangwal, J. Sass, Z. Wokulski, and Z. Żytkiewicz. The Guest Editor is highly grateful to these referees for their efficient collaboration in the peer reviewing of the manuscripts, and to Mrs Tatiana Pałczyńska for taking care of the correspondence. Finally, he expresses his gratitude to Prof. W. Neumann, Editor of Crystal Research and Technology, for his kind invitation to publish the papers as a special issue and for his encouragement, and to Mr H. Kleessen, Editor's Assistance, for preparing the final version of the manuscripts for publication.
K. Sangwal, Lublin