Thursday 23 March 2017

VPHA status update 22.3.2017


The status update below was sent to 76 VPHA contributors and 46 prospective contributors. To register to get the next updates, please email info@ vph-ald.com.
Begin forwarded message:

From: Puurunen Riikka < >
Subject: VPHA status update 22.3.2017
Date: 22 March 2017 at 21:37:12 GMT+2
Cc: Puurunen Riikka < >, Sundqvist Jonas < >

Dear current and prospective VPHA contributors,

This is the first VPHA status update in year 2017. For VPHA, this year has started with significant visibility: the review article published in JVSTA was the most read of all articles published in JVSTA. The previous VPHA status update was published on December 19, 2016. This update discusses the following topics:

  1. ALD history review article(s) in JVSTA
  2. Boulder & NanoSolutions & particle ALD -related ALD History Blog post + Weimer's guest post
  3. About the earlier ALD history activities + about VPHA's future
  4. Recent VPHA-related Wikipedia updates
  5. New affiliation by Puurunen (professor, Aalto University)
  6. Other posts in ALD History Blog (Pessa; ethics; PillarHall)

Wednesday 22 March 2017

OT: Communication to VPHA participants on conformality analysis survey

The VPHA off-topic (OT) communication below was sent to 76 VPHA co-authors and 47 prospective co-authors. 

From: Puurunen Riikka
Sent: 15. maaliskuuta 2017 19:05
To: Puurunen Riikka < >
Cc: Utriainen Mikko < >
Subject: Conformality analysis survey link to VPHA participants

Dear VPHA co-authors and prospective co-authors,

This email is not related to VPHA but to lateral high-aspect-ratio test structures created to analyse the conformality of films made by ALD and other methods. I hope that you do not mind receiving this “off-topic” message sent to all VPHA participants. 

Some of you know that I have been recently working on the topic of conformality analysis of ALD films. Currently, we continue to work on it at VTT in a project funded by Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation. The recipient list has many people knowledgeable of the subject.

Tuesday 14 March 2017

Krause writes about Aalto University's new catalysis professor

Professor emerita Outi Krause has written a very nice description related my new affiliation as professor of Catalysis Science and Technology at Aalto University. The text was originally meant for and published in "Katse", the newsletter of the Finnish Catalysis Society. With the permission of prof. em. Krause and the chairman of Finnish Catalysis Society, it is republished in this post in full (in Finnish).

--- originally published in Katse 1/2017 ---


Riikka Puurunen Aalto-yliopiston professoriksi


TkT Riikka Puurunen aloitti helmikuun alussa Aalto-yliopiston kemian tekniikan korkeakoulussa määräaikaisena teknillisen kemian professorina (associate professor) erityisalueenaan katalyysi.

Riikka Puurunen on TKK:n kasvatti. Hän aloitti opintonsa Kemian osastolla vuonna 1994, valmistui DI:ksi neljä ja puoli vuotta myöhemmin ja väitteli tekniikan tohtoriksi vuonna 2002. Jatko-opintoihin sisältyi myös vuoden tutkimusjakso K.U. Leuvenissä Belgiassa. Väitöksen jälkeen hän palasi Belgiaan postdoc-tutkijaksi IMEC-tutkimuskeskukseen. Riikka tuli takaisin Suomeen ja Otaniemeen v. 2004 VTT:lle tutkijaksi, josta hän siirtyi Aalto-yliopistoon. Hän jatkaa myös VTT:n osa-aikaisena vanhempana tutkijana tämä vuoden heinäkuun loppuun asti.

Monday 13 March 2017

On the mammoth table - JAP 2005, JAP 2013 - next step VPHA?



The "mammoth table" of two-reactant ALD processes that many ALD researchers will have seen, was created for Puurunen's JAP 2005 review (open access here), and updated for the Miikkulainen et al. JAP 2013 review (open access here).


An idea has come up that it might be possible to update the table again within the Virtual Project on the History of ALD (VPHA). No promises yet---just an idea.


Screen capture of the first rows of the updated "mammoth table" spanning over 17 pages. Reprinted from V. Miikkulainen, M. Leskelä, M. Ritala, R. L. Puurunen, J. Appl. Phys. 113 (2013) 021301, http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4757907, with the permission of AIP Publishing.


With the view of possibly updating the mammoth table, this post describes how the mammoth table was originally created and how it has been once updated. Whether or not an update will be made within VPHA, the background information shared here should be useful regarding an update that eventually at some point in some form most likely will be made. A previous post on the unique article codes used in VPHA is related to this post and the mammoth table: the unique coding was already started for the JAP 2005 review and re-used in the Miikkulainen et al. JAP 2013 review as well as in VPHA's ALD-history-evolving-file. If/when an update to the mammoth table will be made within VPHA, the unique article codes will be used again.


ALD surface chemistry review and the mammoth table - Puurunen, JAP 2005

The mammoth table aims to summarize all two-reactant ALD processes developed by a given timeline. The table was first created for the JAP 2005 review.


When writing the JAP 2005 review, I had a vision to try to write the kind of review article which I hoped would have been available when I started with ALD in 1998.

Guest post by Weimer: Early History of Particle ALD at the University of Colorado

Please find below the first guest post ever written for the ALD History Blog: Prof. Alan Weimer from the University of Colorado continues on the topic of a previous related post, sheading light to the early particle ALD developments at the University of Colorado and ALD NanoSolutions.   

--- guest post begins ---

Early History of Particle ALD at the University of Colorado

In 1997, Steve George and I started investigating the ALD on particles – Steve investigated the surface chemistry through in-situ FTIR and I investigated the processing to coat large volumes of fine particles using a fluidized bed reactor.   At that time, Steve was an ALD chemistry expert and I was expert in the synthesis and functionalization of fine particles, having worked in the area for nearly 20 years.  Much of my background was fluidized processing.  Very intense research that year indicated that we could use ALD to coat large volumes of primary particles identically without “gluing them” to neighboring particles.   HRTEM was key as well as surface area, particle size distribution, FTIR, and XPS measurements; and of course agitated particles.   I was quite surprised that individual primary particles could be coated as I knew that CVD inherently deposited nanoparticles formed in the gas phase, hence, forming agglomerated particles.

Monday 6 March 2017

Copy of earlier communication to earlier ALD history review authors

A few days ago, copies of two emails were published in the ALD History Blog, which have been recently sent to the authors of the 2013 ALD history review to update them regarding the latest progress in VPHA. That the post has been re-tweeted in Twitter tells that the material has been of interest to someone. Link to post: http://aldhistory.blogspot.fi/2017/02/copies-of-communications-to-earlier-ald.html

For completeness of info, in this post, an email is published from October 2013, where the authors of the then-new 2013 ALD history review were originally informed of and invited to participate in the then-recently started Virtual Project on the History of ALD.  

From: Puurunen Riikka
Sent: 8. lokakuuta 2013 10:31
To: <10 authors> 
Cc: Puurunen Riikka; Aziz Abdulagatov; Jonas Sundqvist; ALD Pulse
Subject: Virtual project on the history of ALD: introduction and invitation to participate

Dear authors of the recent ALD review, JVSTA 31 (2013) 050818, 

Virtual project on the history of ALD: Introduction and invitation to participate.

Did you know that the first publication of TiO2 thin films from TiCl4 and H2O by ALD on planar silicon substrates dates from year 1970? That Prof. Aleskovskii envisioned ALD as a "route to further miniaturization of microelectronic devices and to molecular electronics" in 1974? That a research group in St Petersburg has been active on ALD all the time since 1960's? These and many other things have already surfaced during the "virtual project on the history of ALD", an open worldwide collaborative effort to clarify the early history of ALD. Your participation in the “virtual project” would be very welcome and your expertise in the field of ALD highly useful for putting the new knowledge properly into place in today's perspective.

Saturday 4 March 2017

New page: collection of ethical guidelines

New page created in ALD History Blog to collect together ethical guidelines from various sources related to the making and publishing of scientific research.

Link: http://aldhistory.blogspot.fi/p/ethical-guidelines.html

Contents as of March 4, 2017:
The goal is that the list will evolve with time to a more covering list. If you have suggestion of links to add, please let me know.

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