The fabrication of integrated circuits necessitates various individual technological steps, in which each has to be of high yield and reproducibility for successful completion. Hence, production line managers, normally of conservative outlook, are extremely careful before introducing production conditions requiring new technological operating conditions, reliability, material quality, and costs. The single slice approach described here is initially aimed toward the development of advanced material and device structures and the small-scale manufacturing of leading devices and ICs. Design (Section I.B), process control (Section I.C), and wafer handling (Section I.D) are intended to be adaptable to the enlargement of existing manufacturing scales. The single slices are stored in cassette-type wafer magazines, thus allowing simple introduction of the method to existing production lines. Prototype equipment reliability and fabrication of a variety of high-performance structures is described in Section I.E.