An excimer laser (XeCl, 308 nm) has been used to locally melt and reflow aluminum alloy films into contacts of VLSI device structures resulting in contact filling and local planarization. This technique has the potential to be the answer to the ‘poof’ aluminum step coverage problem. The first order problems are that of ablation and voids. Voids have been categorised as ‘line voids’ and ‘contact voids’. Various processing conditions of the barrier, Al-Si-Cu alloy and Al-Cu alloy metallizations were explored to obtain the optimum process with the desired film characteristics.