Abstract: A process for fabricating metal-insultor-semiconductor integrated circuits, especially the processing step of annealing a fabricated wafer by passing a laser beam through the semiconductor wafer from the back surface thereof to the semiconductor-insulator interface to effect localized heating of the insulator at the semiconductor-insulator interface, is disclosed. More particularly, the laser beam is of a wavelength which makes the semiconductor wafer substantially transparent and the insulator substantially absorbent to the laser beam. Moreover, since the illuminating area of the laser beam may be substantially smaller than the surface area of the semiconductor-insulator interface, the laser beam may be scanned across the surface area of the interface to effect an overall annealing thereof.