This volume collects the lectures and poster contributions that were presented at the IV. Miinchner SUiconfage which were held in April of 1998. This symposium was -— as were its three predecessors in 1992, 1994, and 1996— again organized jointly by the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker, and by WackerChemie, GmbH. The exceptionally large number of participants from both industry and academia, especially students and young scientists, was convincing evidence of the high interest this meeting continues to find, now having developed into a well-established international symposium. This favorable response, and that of organosilicon researchers from all over the world to the "Organosilicon Chemistry — From Molecules to Materials" proceedings encouraged us to continue the series with the present edition of Volume IV. As was said about the first three volumes, this is also not considered a text book in the common sense which would lay out the basic knowledge of a discipline but provides, written by researchers and experts in a fascinating field of rapidly growing main group chemistry, accounts and summaries of the latest results. Furthermore, in editing the present volume, we used this occasion to update the authors" contributions to the different topics reviewed at the symposium with references of papers that were published during the past two years, making it relevant up to the publishing date...