Friday, 7 October 2016

Baltic ALD 2016, St. Petersburg: travel notes by Puurunen

Updated October 9, 2016
The 14th International Baltic Conference on Atomic Layer Deposition (Baltic ALD 2016, http://www.bald2016.ru/) was organized in St. Petersburg, Russia, on October 3-4, 2016.


The conference consisted of one day of invited lectures and one day of contributed talks and posters. The conference venue was Solo Sokos Hotel Palace Bridge (V.o. Birzhevoi Pereulok 2-4, St. Petersburg, 199004) on the Vasilievsky Island. A get-together event was organized on October 2, 2016. The conference chairman was Prof. Vladimir Kutuzov, the rector of St. Petersburg Electrotechnical University"LETI" and the chairman of the International Advisory Board was Prof. Markku Leskelä from the University of Helsinki. Central local organizers were Prof. Nikolay Egorov and Prof. Alexey Ivanov from LETI. Roughly forty persons participated at the conference. I (Riikka Puurunen) had the pleasure to participate at BALD 2016 both as an invited speaker and as a regular contributor. This was the third time that I participated at a Baltic ALD conference; earlier, I have attended the Baltic ALD of 2014 in Helsinki and of 2015 in Tartu (travel report).
The opening words of the conference were delivered by Vladimir Kutuzov and Markku Leskelä. Then followed the talks by invited speakers: Riikka Puurunen (VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland), Victor Drozd (St. Petersburg State University, Russia), Mikko Ritala (University of Helsinki, Finland), Emma Salmi (Beneq, Finland), Erwin Kessels (Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands), Tobias Törndahl (Uppsala University, Sweden), Andrey Markeev (Moscow Instititute of Physics and Technology, Russia) and Victor Luchinin (St. Petersburg Electrotechnical University “LETI”, Russia). According to the programme, there were 27 contributed talks and 22 posters. 

This is the first time that a meeting in the “Baltic ALD” conference series has been organized in Russia. As told by Markku Leskelä, the Baltic ALD conference series started as a local meeting between Helsinki University of Technology and Tartu University; the first meeting was organized in 1991. Conferences have been organized somewhat irregularly, the typical time between consecutive conferences having been two years (but sometimes just one, and once even five years).  

At this meeting, the "final presentation" of the Virtual Project on the History of ALD (VPHA) was given. VPHA has been active since 2013 and the items listed in the Publication Plan are now approximately completed (this presentation was #12). The slides of the presentation can be accessed at: http://vph-ald.com/VPHApublications/VPHA-Puurunen-etal_FINAL_2016-10-03.pdf and a live (partial) record at: http://vph-ald.com/RecordedPresentations/Puurunen_VPHA_BALD2016-live_2016-10-03.mp4. The VPHA reading work still continues: there are still ~300 “comments” missing and more volunteers are welcome to join the work (several joined at the conference). ALD-history-evolving-file will stay as a growing reference file for early ALD works in the future, too.

The conference was interesting not only because of its historical significance but also because of its scientific contents. As stated by Markku Leskelä in his closing words, this meeting was “a good member in the Baltic ALD series.” Hopefully, the international ALD community can meet in St. Petersburg again in the future.

Below, you find some photos from the conference. Most of the photos have been taken by myself. Some photos are from Tomi Iivonen, Kaupo Kukli, and Fabio Grillo, and I am grateful for them all for allowing me to publish their photos in this blog post.     

Updates 
* October 9, 2016; VPHA signature moved to the end; photo added of Aris Goulas; screen capture of the conference website's welcome words added. 

Twitter, @rlpuu: "In , leaving to to 2016. Interesting conference to come! " Photo by Riikka Puurunen.

Twitter, @rlpuu: "This fence follows the HEL-StPb Allegro train all along the Russian side, keepsing wild animals away. ". Photo by Riikka Puurunen. 

Roofs of St. Petersburg, as seen from my hotel room. Photo by Riikka Puurunen. 

Welcoming words to the conference on the conference website http://www.bald2016.ru/. Screen capture taken on October 9, 2016. 

First day of the conference (photo by Riikka Puurunen). 

Book of abstracts of Baltic ALD 2016. Photo by Riikka Puurunen,

The opening address was delivered by Prof. Vladimir Kutuzov, rector of LETI. Photo by Riikka Puurunen. 
Prof. Markku Leskelä described the earlier BALD meetings in his opening address. Photo by Riikka Puurunen. 


Twitter, @rlpuu: "Prof Markku Leskelä from described the conference series in St Petersburg. ". Photo by Riikka Puurunen.


I had the honour to give the first invited talk at the conference, about the VPHA project, link to presentation here (partial live record here). The organizers had made introductory slides of all invited speakersPhoto by Kaupo Kukli.
In my ALD history presentation (link here), I reviewed major advancements steps taken place during the VPHA in 2013-2016. This particular slide described the ALD Russia 2015 workshop a year ago. Photo by Kaupo Kukli.   

The 2nd invited talk was by Prof Victor Drozd, a pioneer of building vacuum ALD reactors in Russia. Photo by Riikka Puurunen.

Prof. Mikko Ritala gave an invited talk on "Challenges, opportunities and new approaches in ALD process development". Core message: "the success of ALD is built on chemistry." Photo by Riikka Puurunen.


Ritala referred to our joint review (J. Appl. Phys. 113, 021301 (2013)http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4757907) in his invited talk, with the "periodic table of ALD processes. Photo by Riikka Puurunen. 

Dr. Emma Salmi from Beneq gave an interesting invited talk on recent ALD developments - with "growth per cycle (GPC, nm)" and "growth rate (nm/min)" in the same slide! Photo by Riikka Puurunen.

Prof. Erwin Kessels was walking in St. Petersburg in the footsteps of Nikolai Gogol and gave an interesting lecture (again) on PEALD. Photo by Riikka Puurunen. 

Dr. Tobias Törndahl gaved an invited talk on recent developments of ALD for solar cells. Photo by Riikka Puurunen.

Dr. Andrey Markeev --- organizer of ALD Russia 2015 --- gave an invited talk on ALD for memory applications. 

Prof. Victor Luchinin gave an invited talk, discussing ALD and Langmuir-Blodgett techniques. Photo by Riikka Puurunen. 
In his invited talk, Luchinin discussed the history of ALD, too. Photo by Riikka Puurunen.

Twitter, @rlpuu: "Very interesting first day full of invited talks at 2016 in . Entrance to conf. venue photo.". Photo by Riikka Puurunen. 

Monday evening, we had a boat cruise with dinner on river Neva. Photo by Riikka Puurunen.

Prof. Nikolai Yegorov wished everyone welcome. Photo by Riikka Puurunen. 

Twitter, @iivosen_tomi: " and crew enjoying conferce dinner/cruise 🚢" Photo by Tomi Iivonen. 
Photo taken from the ALD 2016 dinner cruise, by Fabio Grillo. 

On Tuesday, I gave a contributed talk on the conformality measurements for ALD films, continuing on the work reported in http://dx.doi.org/10.1116/1.4903941 (open access here). Photo by Kaupo Kukli.

Coffee break at the conference. Photo by Riikka Puurunen. 

Dr. Aris Goulas gave an interesting talk on ALD for the coating of powders. This slide shows the latest view on the history of the topic. Photo by Riikka Puurunen.

Twitter, @rlpuu: "Posters & viewers at 2016. " . Photo by Riikka Puurunen.
Twitter, @rlpuu: "Luchinin, Puurunen & Drozd at St. Petersburg October 4, 2016. Photo taken by Fabio Grillo. ".
Final words by Prof. Alexey Ivanov. Photo by Riikka Puurunen

On Tuesday evening, I went (with Tobias Törndahl) for dinner in the centre. Literary Cafe on Nevski Prospect was fully reserved. Next time in St. Petersburg, need to make a reservation!  

On Wednesday morning, we visited Prof. Anatoly Malygin with Ana Gomes Silva. Malygin has been a central collaborator in the VPHA.  Photo was kindly taken by Malygin's student Ivan Bodalyov.  

HERALD COST network advertisement at Malygin's. Behind in the photo is the classroom, in which I gave again the BALD invited talk on VPHA (about 20 persons were listening). Photo by Riikka Puurunen.

Twitter, @rlpuu: "Renovations at Technical University in St Petersburg. Next year 50-year anniversary of Malygin's group. ". Photo by Riikka Puurunen. 



Twitter, @rlpuu: "Back to Helsinki from with the train from StPetersburg "Finland station"." Photo by Riikka Puurunen. 


Conference badge, with my name correctly written again. Photo by Riikka Puurunen.

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Virtual Project on the History of ALD (VPHA) - in atmosphere of Openness, Respect, and Trust

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