Virtual issue of Chemistry of Materials in Honor of Professor Markku Leskelä

A "virtual issue" - an electronic collection of articles centered on a topic - was published by Chemistry of Materials in July 2018 to celebrate the influential career of professor Markku Leskelä at the verge of his retirement. The virtual issue was published just in time for the ALD 2018 conference, so the conference could celebrate at the same time the 2018 Millennium Technology Prize for Dr. Tuomo Suntola as well as the virtual issue of Prof Leskelä. 

The full virtual issue can be accessed through: https://pubs.acs.org/page/vi/MarkkuLeskela.html. It contains scientific articles published by Leskelä, as well as scientific articles influenced by Leskelä's works, in different journals by ACS. 

A related editorial by his close colleague and first student, Prof. Mikko Ritala and by Chem. Mater. editors is accessible at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.chemmater.8b02742, entitled "In Honor of Professor Markku Leskelä." 

VPHA website updated with ECS Transactions article info

The VPHA website, http://vph-ald.com, has been on July 28, 2018 updated with info of the ECS Transactions article in press:

• Proceedings: R. L. Puurunen, "Learnings from an Open Science Effort: Virtual Project on the History of ALD", ECS Transactions, in press (2018). Open access preprint, DOI: 10.1149/osf.io/exyv3.

As the international ALD 2018 conference in Korea starts on July 29, 2018, it is good to spread the message that VPHA is still on-going and more volunteers are welcome to join. As communicated in the VPHA status update in May 2018, the plan is to produce jointly one more brief concluding review article from within VPHA. (Previous publications are listed in the Publication Plan here; the review now in question belongs to Item 10.) The articles produced earlier from within VPHA have become impactful within the field of ALD what comes to citations and other attention (see e.g. Altmetrics for the "ALE essay"). The last review is expected to be impactful, too.

Prof Steven George receives major AVS award for ALD

Professor Steven George from University of Colorado Boulder receives the John A. Thornton memorial award and lecture 2017 by AVS for "for seminal contributions to understanding, development and applications of atomic layer deposition". More on the award: https://www.avs.org/Awards-Recognition/Professional-Awards/John-A-Thornton-Memorial-Award-Lecture.

Steven George is one of those people who have dedicated a major part of their career for developing ALD. In addition to having led a world-leading university research group on ALD for about two decades, he is also a co-founder of ALD Nanosolutions (ALD History Blog posts here) and has authored for example the world's most cited review article on ALD in Chemical Reviews, 2010 (mentioned also in the ALD History Blog). In 2013, Steven George received the ALD Innovation award at the international AVS ALD conference (more on the 2016 award here).

Steven George will deliver the John A Thornton memorial lecture entitled " Atomic Layer Deposition: Highlights from the Last 25 Years" at the AVS 64 meeting on October 31, 2017. More details available via https://www.avs.org/Symposium/Technical-Program/Divisions-Groups --> Program/Scheduler.

Congratulations to Prof. George!

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

ALD 2016: Travel notes

Updated 28.8.2016

The 16th International Conference on Atomic Layer Deposition ALD2016 (http://www.ald2016.ie), including the 3rd International Workshop on Atomic Layer Etching, was organized in Dublin, Ireland, July 24-27, 2016. I had a pleasure to participate at the conference as a speaker, poster presenter, and as an International Programme Committee member. This blog post shares my travel notes from conference, thereby continuing my series on travel notes first written for the ALD Russia 2015 workshop and thereafter for Baltic ALD 2015, my St Petersburg visit Nov 2015, and HERALD Helsinki seminar May 2016.

ALD 2016 conference chairs Simon Elliott and Jonas Sundqvist. Photo from Twitter, @jv3sund. 

Since the first American Vacuum Society Topical Conference on Atomic Layer Deposition  in Monterey CA 2001, the international ALD conference series organized every odd year in USA by the AVS and every even year outside USA in collaboration with AVS, has evolved into a major event that provides the best possible snapshot of ALD at the forefront of science at academia and industry alike. There were more than 800 registered participants at the meeting, of which about 50% were industrial; and about 400 presentations, of which about 10% were industrial. The conference lasted for three days and comprised maximum four parallel sessions and two days of poster sessions. All presentations were recorded and will be made available on a DVD after the conference (past DVDs can be bought from AVS by contacting heather@ avs.org).