The importance of reducing the impurity concentration in future confinement experiments and ultimately in fusion reactors brought together a group of 120 plasma physicists and surface physicists from 10 countries to the Second International Conference on Surface Effects in Controlled Fusion Devices. Over 80 papers were presented on subjects ranging from the investigation of surface interactions of importance in fusion devices to descriptions of the behaviour of impurities in plasma confinement experiments. A major success of the Conference was in bringing about effective communication between the plasma physicists and the surface physicists concerned with the fundamental processes.