Tuomo Suntola's main review on Atomic Layer Deposition (Epitaxy) now Open Access

Open Access for Dr. Tuomo Suntola's main review on atomic layer deposition has been kindly given by the Elsevier publisher (per request, for a year’s time?). As the review is from 1989, it is still entitled ”atomic layer epitaxy”. In the (evolving) list of publications on the history of ALD on the website of the Virtual Project on the History of ALD (VPHA), this review is currently the oldest one listed.  

• Tuomo Suntola, Atomic Layer Epitaxy, Materials Science Reports, Volume 4, Issue 5, 1989, Pages 261-312, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0920-2307(89)80006-4.

For the 1989 review, among other things, Suntola mapped the laboratories working with ALD known to him at that time. The list is in Table 1 and ordered according to the first publication. The list is very interesting to read through. I notice laboratories (in alphabetical order) from Austria, Canada, China, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, UK, USA. From Finland, the list gives (in the order of first publication) Lohja Oy; Tampere University of Technology; Helsinki University of Technology, Laboratory of Physics; Helsinki University of Technology, Department of Chemistry; Joensuu University. 

I hope many people interested the field of ALD will have a look at the article - and perhaps even cite it in future publications. 

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

Supporting Letters for Millennium Technology Prize 2018 nomination

updated 21.7.2017
Supporting Letters are sought for the Millennium Technology Prize 2018 nomination for ALD and Tuomo Suntola, especially to help describe the societal impact of ALD.

Since the day I promised to nominate atomic layer deposition and Tuomo Suntola for Millennium Technology Prize 2018, I have received positive feedback from many people and organizations, as well as questions on how one can support the nomination. Can Supporting Letters be prepared by individual persons or organizations? How does one prepare a Supporting Letter?

I try to answer all questions in this ALD History Blog post.

Scheme showing how a Supporting Letter could look like. 

Views on Wikipedia related to ALD and VPHA

People of all sorts of backgrounds (including journalists and politicians) use Wikipedia as a quick source to find basic information on a variety of subjects.

The next image shows pageviews analysis for a few pages relevant to ALD and VPHA, taken on January 28, 2017, and showing the statistics for the past twenty days. For example, the page of atomic layer deposition is viewed typically 100 to 200 times per day, while chemical vapor deposition is viewed typically 300 to 700 times per day. There is a pattern related to week days: towards weekend, there are less views. To compare, in ALD History Blog, the typical number of pageviews for an average page is several tens; the most viewed post (travel notes from ALD 2016) has received 297 views all time as of Feb 28, 2017.

I have during VPHA understood how valuable Wikipedia and also Wikimedia Commons are as a sources, and I invite everyone to contribute in continuously improving their information. Non-specialists will appreciate clear and jargon-free language, logical structure of the page, good pictures and relevant references. Review articles should be good as links. All references should be openly available for viewing---regarding scientific articles, this means that they should be not be behind a paywall but be of open access.

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).

ALD history at ALD 2016 Ireland

Prof Greg Parsons introducing Prof Anatoly Malygin to give a plenary talk at ALD 2016. Photo by Riikka Puurunen.

The ALD 2016 conference was a major step forward in advancing the understanding of the worldwide history of Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD). Progress took place at least in three ways:

1. Prof. Anatoly Malygin (St. Petersburg State Technological Institute (Technical University)) delivered an invited talk. ALD 2016 was the first time ever that a person representing the branch of ALD of "old Russian works" has presented a talk at the international ALD conferences. Great thanks Prof. Malygin delivering the talk as well as for the conference chairs Dr. Simon Elliott and Dr. Jonas Sundqvist for inviting him.

Snapshot of ALD research in Finland - presentations at ALD 2016

The next major international event in the field of atomic layer deposition (ALD) will be the ALD 2016 conference in Ireland in July 2016. To this post, I have collected information on oral presentations from Finland from the conference programme page recently released.

In total, there will be 16 oral presentations from six affiliations in Finland: Aalto University (3), ASM (1), Beneq (1), University of Helsinki (5), University of Jyväskylä (1), and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland (5). Additionally, there will of course be many poster presentations, including the VPHA poster. Oral presentation titles and times are copied below. 

I think that the titles nicely illustrate the multitude of ALD research being made on ALD in Finland, four decades after the first experiments were made by Suntola and co-workers to make ALD (then ALE, Atomic Layer Epitaxy) based thin-film electroluminescent displays (link). 

Those who have interest in ALD in Finland are all welcome to join the Finland ALD group in LinkedIn, where Finland ALD -related news are shared. There are currently 237 members, most of them from Finland and some from abroad. 

Suntola's English Wikipedia page is updated

Tuomo Suntola must be one of the greatest Finnish scientists, inventors, industrialists of all times. I am happy to share that Tuomo Suntola's Wikipedia page in English has been updated related to VPHA Publication Plan Item #11 with the most important turns of Suntola's career. This his how in Wikipedia the page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuomo_Suntola, "Training and Career", reads at the moment:

"In 1971, Tuomo Suntola earned his PhD in semiconductor physics from the Helsinki University of Technology. After completing his PhD, Suntola made his first industrial development while working at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, a thin film humidity sensor “Humicap” for Vaisala Oy, a Finnish company specialized in meteorological instruments.

ALD terminology discussion: Atomic Layer Deposition

Everyone uses term "Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD)" nowadays, but this is not how the technique was invented. Originally, the technology was called Atomic Layer Epitaxy (in Finland) and Molecular Layering - or actually, Molekulyarnoe Naslaivanie (in Russia). 

What is the first documented use of the term ALD? I am asking, because I don't know --- not yet. By the time of writing the "ALD History Review" (number 10 in the VPHA Publication Plan), we should know. Preparations for the review are now just starting, and more co-authors are welcome, as are also for the VPHA presentation at Ireland ALD 2016. 

ALD in Wikipedia - status and surprises

Updating Wikipedia regarding the history of ALD is one of the goals that we have set in the Virtual Project on the History of ALD (VPHA). Today, I had a quick look at the status of ALD-related information in Wikipedia --- and got surprised.

Here are the main pages related to ALD - these are quite as expected.

• Atomic layer deposition
• Atomic layer epitaxy
• Tuomo Suntola

I did not find any pages related to Aleskovskii and Koltsov, who independently developed ALD in USSR under the name Molecular Layering, and also no dedicated page of Molecular Layering. 

Many surprises came, when I looked into the contents of the three pages.

ALD in Twitter

Twitter is one of the main sources directing people to this ALD History Blog. I have recommended Twitter personally to many. With this post, would like to tell still to more people, how Twitter can be beneficial, also related to ALD.

Very basic features of Twitter:

• Twitter calls itself sometimes a "microblog service". 
• There is a general limitation of 140 characters for each post. 
• Twitter used "hashtags" (#) as keywords to organise content. 
• Users are identified with the "@" symbol.