VPHA JVSTA article on the history of ALD published with Open Access

It is my pleasure to inform that VPHA's article on the recommended reading list of early ALD publications has been published online in the Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology A (JVSTA), in the special ALD issue of January 2017.

• Title: Recommended reading list of early publications on atomic layer deposition—Outcome of the “Virtual Project on the History of ALD”
• Authors (62 in total, alphabetical order): Esko Ahvenniemi, Andrew R. Akbashev, Saima Ali, Mikhael Bechelany, Maria Berdova, Stefan Boyadjiev, David C. Cameron, Rong Chen, Mikhail Chubarov, Veronique Cremers, Anjana Devi, Viktor Drozd, Liliya Elnikova, Gloria Gottardi, Kestutis Grigoras, Dennis M. Hausmann, Cheol Seong Hwang, Shih-Hui Jen, Tanja Kallio, Jaana Kanervo, Ivan Khmelnitskiy, Do Han Kim, Lev Klibanov, Yury Koshtyal, A. Outi I. Krause, Jakob Kuhs, Irina Kärkkänen, Marja-Leena Kääriäinen, Tommi Kääriäinen, Luca Lamagna, Adam A. Łapicki, Markku Leskelä, Harri Lipsanen, Jussi Lyytinen, Anatoly Malkov, Anatoly Malygin, Abdelkader Mennad, Christian Militzer, Jyrki Molarius, Małgorzata Norek, Çağla Özgit-Akgün, Mikhail Panov, Henrik Pedersen, Fabien Piallat, Georgi Popov, Riikka L. Puurunen, Geert Rampelberg, Robin H. A. Ras, Erwan Rauwel, Fred Roozeboom, Timo Sajavaara, Hossein Salami, Hele Savin, Nathanaelle Schneider, Thomas E. Seidel, Jonas Sundqvist, Dmitry B. Suyatin, Tobias Törndahl, J. Ruud van Ommen, Claudia Wiemer, Oili M. E. Ylivaara, Oksana Yurkevich
• Citation: Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology A 35 (2017) 010801 (13 pages). 
• Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1116/1.4971389.

The main content of the article is the recommended reading list of 22 early ALD publications, created through open voting among the VPHA participants. For each publication, the reference list contains the full author list and the title in English, translated from the original language when necessary. The usual practice of JVSTA would have been to shorten the author list to "et al." from a certain number of author and NOT include the titles; we are grateful for the JVSTA editors for making exceptions and allowing us to expand the article for a complete historical record (you can find our article correspondence here). The article's Introduction contains a description of how VPHA started and notations on some ALD history activities preceeding it.

Hopefully, this article will stimulate people to read some of the original early ALD publications. VPHA is still open for new volunteers to join and to share comments on early ALD publications in the ALD-history-evolving-file--- >300 did not make it to the shortlist of the article. If you would like to volunteer, please contact us through  info@ vph-ald.com (delete the space).

Many people have helped VPHA to progress in some way. While we have tried to declare all major contributions in the (longish) Acknowledgement, in addition to those mentioned, numerous people have helped VPHA to progress in various ways. We are grateful for everyone's help, big and small, in the past and in the future: all of it matters.

The article is published with Open Access (license: CC BY 4.0) and can be freely used e.g. for teaching.  The abstract and acknowledgements from the article are copied below for easy reference.

 ABSTRACT

Atomic layer deposition (ALD), a gas-phase thin film deposition technique based on repeated, self-terminating gas–solid reactions, has become the method of choice in semiconductor manufacturing and many other technological areas for depositing thin conformal inorganic material layers for various applications. ALD has been discovered and developed independently, at least twice, under different names: atomic layer epitaxy (ALE) and molecular layering. ALE, dating back to 1974 in Finland, has been commonly known as the origin of ALD, while work done since the 1960s in the Soviet Union under the name “molecular layering” (and sometimes other names) has remained much less known. The virtual project on the history of ALD (VPHA) is a volunteer-based effort with open participation, set up to make the early days of ALD more transparent. In VPHA, started in July 2013, the target is to list, read and comment on all early ALD academic and patent literature up to 1986. VPHA has resulted in two essays and several presentations at international conferences. This paper, based on a poster presentation at the 16th International Conference on Atomic Layer Deposition in Dublin, Ireland, 2016, presents a recommended reading list of early ALD publications, created collectively by the VPHA participants through voting. The list contains 22 publications from Finland, Japan, Soviet Union, United Kingdom, and United States. Up to now, a balanced overview regarding the early history of ALD has been missing; the current list is an attempt to remedy this deficiency.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

R.L.P. thanks Tuomo Suntola for his support during the VPHA. Aziz Abdulagatov and Annina Titoff are acknowledged for significant help during the initiation of VPHA. The authors are grateful for all volunteers, who in addition to the current authors have shared at least one comment in the ALD-history-evolving-file during VPHA, in alphabetical order (as of December 3, 2016): Jaan Aarik, Ivan Bodalyov, Nikolai Chekurov, Simon Elliott, Aris Goulas, Marcel Junige, Luis Fabián Peña, Alexander Pyymaki Perros, David C. Smith, Pia Sundberg, Massimo Tallarida, Mikko Utriainen, Timo Weckman, and Thomas Wächtler. Additionally, Angel Yanguas-Gil has valuably contributed to VPHA by making VPHA-related improvements in Wikipedia and Christian Dussarrat by translating a Japanese original ALD paper. The organizers of the International Atomic Layer Deposition conferences kindly allowed a short-notice announcement of VPHA at the AVS ALD 2013 San Diego conference. R.L.P. acknowledges partial funding of the VPHA coordination activities by the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Atomic Layer Deposition by Academy of Finland. This article is partly based upon work from COST Action MP1402 ‘Hooking together European research in atomic layer deposition (HERALD)’, supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology). The VPHA would not have been possible without the recent advances in professional social networking and cloud computing.

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