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.

VPHA communication: 3rd commenting round to start / DL Sept 23

The email below was sent to 71 current and 35 prospective VPHA co-authors. 

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Dear VPHA co-authors and prospective co-authors,

The VPHA reading is now 68% completed. To get closer to 100%, we have been preparing for a third round of reading. We are finished with selecting papers to read, and distribution of papers will soon start.

As earlier, our goal is to have each early ALD publication red and commented upon by minimum three people. Commenting is done in the ALD-history-evolving-file and bookkeeping in VPHA-reading-overview-file. The number of papers chosen per person varies and is in maximum five. You can view in VPHA-author-info-update file (2^nd tab, “reading-distribution3”), which files have been selected for you.

Early ALD publications with zero comments - VPHA welcomes more volunteers

The ALD History Project VPHA has progressed well during the first half of 2016, see e.g. the poster to be presented at ALD 2016 Ireland next week. The work is not competed yet, however: e.g., we have 16 early ALD publications which have no "VPHA comments" yet and the overall reading progress status is 67%.  

The table below shows all 16 publications listed in ALD-history-evolving-file with zero comments. The list includes publications in Bulgarian, English, German, Japanese, and Russian. The list clearly contains some historically important paper, for example:

• publication by Pakkanen and Lindblad (in English), likely to be the very first density functional theory approach for ALD chemistry; and 
• publication by Jun-ichi Nishizawa (in Japanese), likely to be the very first ALD/ALE paper from Japan. 

We will organize one more reading-distribution round in VPHA, to get the early ALD publications (up to 1986) read and commented. Target is that all publications should be commented by three people; one comment per publication is the absolute minimum. After the completion of the reading, we plan to re-open the voting to refine the recommended reading list, the first version of which is published in the ALD 2016 poster (voting will be re-opened open maximum for some weeks). More volunteers are still welcome to join the ALD history reading&voting, to help us complete the work. If you'd like to volunteer, please contact us e.g. through emailing info@ vph-ald.com. 

At ALD 2016 Ireland, there will be many VPHA volunteers around. The final VPHA poster co-author and affiliation list can be found at the end of this post. The co-author lists includes e.g. the conference chairs, several invited speakers, and some leading professors.

VPHA communication: >500 points by thirty people received in voting

The email below was sent to 70 co-authors and 29 prospective co-authors.

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Dear VPHA co-authors and prospective co-authors,

Voting to create a conclusive recommended reading list of early ALD publications  to the ALD 2016 poster has now ended. Voting deadline was June 15th, all VPHA co-authors were allowed to participate, rules were announced here. 

An amazing number of 507 points were collected in the voting, given by an as-amazing number of thirty (30) people.  (At the moment, VPHA has 70 co-authors.) Many thanks for all those who participated in the voting! The large participation ensures that the result is created by collective wisdom and not dominated by the views of only few individuals. 

VPHA communication: voting + organizational abstract to BALD2016

The email below was sent to 68 co-authors and 31 prospective co-authors. 

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Dear VPHA co-authors and prospective co-authors,

I would like to communicate quick updates on the status of VPHA again.

VPHA voting.

Today is the DL to participate in the voting for the "conclusive recommended reading list" for the ALD 2016 poster. So far, we have collected 299 points. Thank you for the many people who have voted. Everyone who votes, will be a co-author of the planned publication to JVSTA, which reports the "conclusive recommended reading list." Tommorrow I will start to prepare the poster on the basis of the information received.

Those, who did not vote yet, have still some time to submit the vote (link to VPHA-voting-ENTRY-file).

BALD 2016, St Petersburg.

(1) The abstract submission deadline of BALD 2016 (http://bald2016.ru/) has been postponed by the organizers and is now June 25^th.

(2) I have been presented with the possibility of delivering an invited talk at the conference regarding the history of ALD. Below I have copied the text of the submitted abstract (title: "On the history of ALD and the VPHA project"). My goal was to thank all VPHA co-authors (who have left at least one comment in the ALD-history-evolving-file, as of the moment of submission, June 15th) in the acknowledgements. Please check that your name is there; if you notice a name missing let me know, I think I can still update the abstract.

Best regards,

Riikka Puurunen, VPHA coordinator

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Riikka Puurunen (Dr.), Senior Scientist, Microsystems and Nanoelectronics; Project Manager (IPMA C)

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Tietotie 3, Espoo (P.O. Box 1000), FI-02044 Espoo (VTT), Finland

< >, www.vttresearch.com, www.aldcoe.fi

fi.linkedin.com/in/riikkapuurunen, vph-ald.com, aldhistory.blogspot.fi, twitter.com/rlpuu

------- Abstract submitted to BALD 2016 starts --------

On the history of ALD and the VPHA project

Riikka L. Puurunen,¹ Yury Koshtyal,² Henrik Pedersen,³ J. Ruud van Ommen,⁴ Oksana Yurkevich,⁵ Jonas Sundqvist⁶

¹VTT Research Centre of Finland Ltd, Espoo, Finland
² Ioffe Institute, St. Petersburg, Russia
³ Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden
⁴ Delft University of Technology, Delft, the Netherlands
⁵ Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, Kaliningrad, Russia
⁶ Lund University, Lund, Sweden; and The Fraunhofer IKTS, Dresden, Germany

E-mail: riikka.puurunen@ vtt.fi

Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD), based on the repeated, self-terminating gas—solid reactions of at least two gaseous compounds on a solid substrate, has become a disruptive key enabling materials manufacturing method. By its inventors, this method was given the name Molecular Layering (1960s, Soviet Union) and Atomic Layer Epitaxy (1970s, Finland). While the original names still live on, gradually since the 1990s, "ALD" has evolved to be the mostly commonly used name for the technique. 

Virtual Project on the History of ALD (VPHA) was set up in summer 2013 as an open effort, in which volunteered scientists from all around the world work together in an atmosphere of openness, respect and trust to better understand the early days of ALD ("early" is defined here to end in 1986). VPHA has already resulted in joint publications, a tutorial, two essays, an exhibition, Wikipedia updates, and a blog; see http://vph-ald.com and VPHA publication plan for details.

This presentation at the 14th International Baltic Conference on Atomic Layer Deposition aims to be the last organizational talk of VPHA. The presentation has two goals. First, it will overview of the activities and results of VPHA. Second, it will---on the basis of the new big picture developed in VPHA---summarize the major steps of advancement, which have taken place in the early research and technology of ALD around the world.

Acknowledgement: We are grateful to Tuomo Suntola, Anatoly Malygin and Victor Drozd their general support during the VPHA, to Aziz Abdulagatov and Annina Titoff for help in initiating the VPHA, and to Angel Yanguas-Guil for help with creating and updating ALD-related Wikipedia pages. We kindly thank all participants of VPHA who (as of June 15, 2016) have shared comments in the ALD-history-evolving-file (in alphabetical order): Jaan Aarik, Esko Ahvenniemi, Andrew Akbashev, Saima Ali, Mikhael Bechelany, Maria Berdova, David Cameron, Nikolai Chekurov, Mikhail Chubarov, Véronique Cremers, Victor E. Drozd, Simon D. Elliott, Liliya Elnikova, Gloria Gottardi, Kestutis Grigoras, Dennis Hausmann, Cheol Seong Hwang, Shih-Hui Jen, Marcel Junige, Tanja Kallio, Jaana Kanervo, Ivan Khmelnitskiy, Do Han Kim, Lev Klibanov, Outi Krause, Jakob Kuhs, Irina Kärkkänen, Marja-Leena Kääriäinen, Tommi O. Kääriäinen, Luca Lamagna, Adam Lapicki, Markku Leskelä, Harri Lipsanen, Jussi Lyytinen, Anatolii Malkov, Anatolii Malygin, Christian Militzer, Jyrki Molarius, Małgorzata Norek, Cagla Ozgit-Akgun, Mikhail Panov, Luis Fabián Peña, Fabien Piallat, Georgi Popov, Alexander Pyymaki Perros, Geert Rampelberg, Robin H. A. Ras, Erwan Rauwel, Fred Roozeboom, Timo Sajavaara, Hossein Salami, Hele Savin, Nathanaelle Schneider, Thomas E. Seidel, Pia Sundberg, Dmitry Suyatin, Massimo Tallarida, Tobias Törndahl, Mikko Utriainen, Thomas Waechtler, Claudia Wiemer, and Oili M. E. Ylivaara. RLP acknowledges partial funding from the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Atomic Layer Deposition by the Academy of Finland.

------- Abstract submitted to BALD 2016 ends --------

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

Overall status (looks good!) + Publications without comments

Yesterday, I browsed through the ALD-history-evolving-file, thinking of which publications to vote in my part for the "conclusive recommended reading list" of early ALD publications. Conclusion: I was very happy with what I saw. The ALD-history-evolving-file, with its >700 personal comments on 360 publications by 66 VPHA volunteers (reading completion: 65.5%), looks really good. Those (crazy) ideas on the basis of which we in summer 2013 initiated the VPHA, have been largely realized. Soon, it will be time to wrap up VPHA. Next steps will be the voting and tentatively a letter/article in the upcoming special ALD issue of JVSTA (see the previous post). New co-authors can still join VPHA and participate as co-authors in these final activities.

Below I have listed the publications which do not have any comments yet as of yesterday. The list included publications in German, English, Finnish, Japanese, Russian. (Russian theses are excluded from the list, as we should get comments on all of those.) I hope that in the next days/weeks, each of these will have at least one comment in the ALD-history-evolving-file.

VPHA communication: 2nd reading distribution round (target: Jun 8)

 The email below was sent to 63 VPHA co-authors and 30 prospective co-authors.

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Dear current and prospective VPHA co-authors,

We are about to start the 2nd round of distributing papers to read n VPHA.

Each of you can expect to get 3-5 papers to read within the next few days (you can view the distribution plan in the VPHA-author-info-update file, 2nd tab).

Those who can read Russian will get five papers. We have more papers in Russian that can be distributed this way, so if you can read Russian and are willing to read more, please let us know (email info@ vph-ald.com). More people are also welcome to join the reading. Especially if you know a person who can read Russian and would maybe be interested to join, you can give him/her a hint of VPHA. Volunteers can also spontaneously contact us at info@ vph-ald.com.

Those people who get less than five papers, in addition to the publications assigned to you, you could consider reading and commenting some of the central early ALD publications, e.g.:

• {Sveshnikova1970b} en ru - TiO2 on silicon
• {Suntola1976} fi swe en ru … Suntola 1st patent
• (Aleskovskii1990) en Aleskovskii, V. B. & Drozd, V. E. Principles of the precise synthesis of supermolecular objects: atomic layer epitaxy, molecular layering, chemical buildup, Acta Polytech. Scand., Chem. Technol. Ser., 1990, 195, 155-161  (not currently included in the ALD-history-evolving-file but can be added if there people provide comments, although this is outside the up-to-1986 time limit). 

VPHA status update 2016-05-16

 The status update below was sent to 63 co-authors and 30 prospective co-authors.

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Dear VPHA co-authors and prospective co-authors,

VPHA has progressed significantly during the past weeks. Here, you find an update on the following topics:

1. VPHA reading progress – Next check June 8
2. VPHA voting for conclusive recommended reading list, ALD 2016 poster: DL June 15
3. VPHA ALD History Review reminder
4. VPHA organisational poster at Helsinki ALDCoE/HERALD workshop
5. A comment without name in ALD-history-evolving-file
6. ALD-history-evolving-file how-to: Please preferably copy-paste instead of writing in the file directly
7. Other ALD History blog posts 

The previous update was sent on April 29th; you can access earlier updates collectively in this link.

VPHA voting is ready for early adopters to test

VPHA voting files are ready for "early adopters" to use and test, to create the conclusive recommended reading list of early ALD publications for the ALD 2016 Ireland VPHA presentation.

You find the links to the two voting files + instructions though http://vph-ald.com/VPHAopenfiles.html (at the moment under the "under construction" heading) and in the bullets below. The early adopters can make their first vote already; you have time to update and change your vote until June 15th. At the moment, of the two options, only "option b" is open, that is, voting through the VPHA-voting-ENTRY-file.

• VPHA-voting-file (open for everyone to view)
• VPHA-voting-instructions (open for everyone to view)
• VPHA-voting-ENTRY-file (open for everyone to edit)

VPHA communication: first ALD reviews (ALE, ML)

The email below was sent on May 4, 2016, to 54 VPHA co-authors and 35 prospective co-authors. 

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Dear VPHA co-authors and prospective co-authors,

The VPHA reading is progressing slowly but steadily. According to the VPHA-reading-overview-file, the percent of reading completed is now 46.8%. I hope that by May 14^th, this number will be >> 50%.

While studying at the general progress, I've noticed that the two reviews written by the inventors/developers of ALD (ALE, ML), have not yet received very many comments in the ALD-history-evolving-file. These are the reviews by Aleskovskii (4 comments) and Suntola (1 comment):

VPHA reading proceeds - now 44% completed

From the numbers, it is evident that the VPHA reading has started to progress again. This is, of course, thanks to the active spreading of papers to read. Around the time of publishing the post entitled "Many hands make light work", eight people contacted us to volunteer for the VPHA reading. 

At the moment, the ALD-history-evolving-file has 53 co-authors from 15 countries. The data in the VPHA-reading-overview-file shows that reading is now 44% completed. More co-authors are still needed and welcome to join the reading.

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

Update on the VPHA reading distribution - DL May 14

Information sent by email on April 14 to current (52) and prospective (32) VPHA co-authors. 

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Dear VPHA current and prospective co-authors,

In VPHA, we have now paired authors and publications and are actively spreading publications for co-authors to read. Everyone should receive by email publications to read that match their language skills and when possible also research interests. Thank you Oksana, Yury and Henrik for your great efforts here! 

Let us agree that everyone should preferably leave their comments in the ALD-history-evolving-file latest on May 14th, so that we can make the next large status check from May 15th on. Let us remember to update the VPHA-reading-overview-file too, to reflect the number of comments per paper. 

VPHA abstract to ALD 2016 Ireland - DL postponed to Feb 17

The Ireland ALD 2016 conference has postponed its abstract submission deadline by a week to February 21 (was: February 14). Consequently, we can also postpone the deadline of joining the VPHA abstract to ALD 2016 (Item #9 in the VPHA Publication Plan).



The abstract has currently 49 co-authors from 14 countries. With the postponed deadline, new people can join as co-authors until February 17, 2016. Condition for joining as a co-author is to leave at least one comment in the ALD-history-evolving-file (find link also through http://vph-ald.com/VPHAopenfiles.html) by the given deadline.

Older related post: http://aldhistory.blogspot.fi/2016/01/vpha-abstract-to-ald-2016-ireland-dl.html

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

How to navigate in massive VPHA co-editing files

The main co-editing file of Virtual Project on the History of ALD (VPHA), the ALD-history-evolving-file, has at the moment 177 pages. In some months, it will have maybe two hundred pages more. How can you navigate in a giant file like this?

The easiest way that I have found is to use the search function built in every browser (shortcut typically: CRTL + f). In VPHA, each historical ALD publication has (or will get) a unique code. (In addition to navigation, the unique codes will also be used for writing the ALD History Review - more on that later.) These codes are given in parentheses, like this: {Sveshnikova1970b} en ru, both in the ALD-history-evolving-file and the VPHA-reading-overview-file. The languages, in which we have the publication available, are shown after the code itself (this is the aim, at least).

Historical ALD publications with more than three VPHA comments

Continuing on the previous post, here is finally a list of historical ALD publications which have (according to the current bookkeeping) received more comments in VPHA reading than the target number of three. This list contains ten (10) publications at the moment.

I would not yet call this a recommended reading list yet for the history of ALD, as the work is still very much on-going --- about 40% of the effort is now done. It does seem obvious, however, that in the end of VPHA the most interesting/important (and maybe also at the same time accessible) articles will have received more comments than average and that one kind of recommendation for "early ALD history reading" can ben created merely on the basis of the number of comments given for each publication.

Historical ALD publications with three VPHA comments

Continuing on the previous post listing publications in VPHA that have received two comments, the list below shows publications in the ALD-history-evolving-file that have received three comments. We aim for three reads & comments per publication, which means that these publications should have enough reads. One can still read and comment further. Especially in cases where it looks like the article will not be included in the final ALD literature list (e.g., Kohlschutter1950), it will be good to have many opinions, to be sure. This list contains 21 items.

Historical ALD publications with two VPHA comments

Now that I have listed the articles in ALD-history-evolving-file with zero or one comment, for the sake of completeness, it will be good to list also those with two or more comments for the same moment. The publications below have received two comments in the ALD-history-evolving-file in the Virtual Project on the History of ALD (VPHA). Thus, one is missing for each item, if we aim for three reads & comments per publication. There are 69 publications in this list.

Historical ALD articles with one comment

Going though the table of historical ALD articles with no comments yet in VPHA (http://aldhistory.blogspot.fi/2016/01/historical-ald-articles-with-no-comments.html), I noticed that there are few publications for English-speakers to read. Likely >90% of the publications are in Russian. There are also theses in Finnish, and some publications in German and Bulgarian.

To facilitate the VPHA reading progress, it should be useful to point publications for English-speakers, too. So, I created another list of articles in ALD-history-evolving-file that at the moment have one comment. There are 157 such articles at the moment, listed below. Let's make some progress for these! The target is that, by the end of VPHA, each publication has at least three comments.

New type of statistics for ALD-history-evolving-file

Good news: I have learnt how one can collect article reading statistics from the VPHA-reading-overview-file with Google spreadsheets functions. This makes it easy to visualise the status of commenting, whether individual papers have 0, 1, 2, 3, or 3+ comments. Below you find the current situation. With time, I plan to report on trends on how the reading evolves.

Statistics of the number of VPHA comments per ALD publication, on the basis of VPHA-reading-overview-file, as of 7.1.2016. Made with Google spreadsheets. 

VPHA abstract to ALD 2016 Ireland - DL Feb 7

The webpage of ALD 2016 in Dublin, Ireland, July 24-27, http://ald2016.com/ has been updated and abstract submission is open.

From VPHA, there will be one abstract to ALD 2016 (Item #9 in the Publication Plan). The contents of the presentation will be a summary of the historical ALD papers and a recommended reading list, created together by the VPHA group, based on the contents of the ALD-history-evolving-file. All those will be listed as authors of the presentation, who have participated in the voluntary VPHA reading and left at least one comment in the ALD-history-evolving-file by the time of sending the abstract. We have at the moment 41 co-authors from 12 countries (Poland joined recently).

The deadline of ALD 2016 is February 14. The VPHA internal deadline should be somewhat earlier; let us make this one week. If you'd like to join the VPHA abstract as an author, please make your first comment in the ALD-history-evolving-file no later than on February 7, 2016. People can of course join the voluntary VPHA reading later than this, too, only then their name will not appear in the ALD 2016 abstract.



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