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

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.   

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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.

On the "earlier ALD history activities" mentioned in the JVSTA focused ALD history review

As stated in the focused ALD history review recently published in the Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology A, the Virtual Project on the History of ALD (VPHA) "in essence, continues the earlier ALD history activities of one of the current authors, whose results were published in a review article in 2005."

In this post, I wish to tell more of the background of the earlier ALD history activities mentioned: how they started and what they were. The earlier history activities are related to my own doctoral thesis (2002) and the postdoctoral time after that.

Screen capture,  R. L. Puurunen's doctoral thesis at the Aalto University library server, access through http://lib.tkk.fi/Diss/2002/isbn9512261421/.

Microchemistry, Neste and Helsinki University of Technology - doctoral thesis

I made my Master's thesis in 1998 at Microchemistry, Espoo, Finland (nowadays part of ASM International), and continued for doctorate in 1999-2002 partly Neste and partly Helsinki University of Technology (HUT). Generalizing, the subject of my research was the surface modification of porous particles by atomic layer deposition for catalyst applications.

CU Boulder Today, ALD NanoSolutions, VPHA

CU Boulder Today published on Feb 7, 2017 a nice article describing the history of the company ALD NanoSolutions, a spin-off from the University of Colorado Boulder. ALD NanoSolutions is specialized in atomic layer deposition (ALD) for the coating of particles. Link to article: http://www.colorado.edu/today/2017/02/07/spinoff-company-all-cu-boulder-family.

Some quotes from the CU Boulder Today article:

• In 1997, Professor Alan Weimer of chemical and biological engineering heard a campus talk by Professor Steven George of chemistry about a novel process of coating surfaces with the thinnest of materials possible, known as atomic layer deposition (ALD).
• Within a few years Weimer and George had filed a number of patents on the technology, gaining exclusive rights to a wide range of intellectual property.
• “This company has executed with focus and pragmatism since we formed it, and now we are moving into high gear commercially,” says Weimer. “And we have what I call a lot of high-end ethics within the company, which is very important to all of us. That is one reason we are all still together after all these years.”

My first recollection of ALD NanoSolutions is from early 2000s, from the time I was a doctoral student at Helsinki University of Technology - nowadays Aalto University - in the Industrial Chemistry group of Prof. Outi Krause during 1999 to 2002. My research concerned particle ALD for catalyst applications. I started in 1998 as a diploma worker at Microchemistry Ltd. (nowadays part of ASM) in a research line which had been started many years earlier in Finland by Tuomo Suntola at Microchemistry Ltd. and the Finnish oil company Neste Oy (for more info, see the "Suntola story" in CVD 2014, details below). At HUT, we were of course curious of this new company: who is behind it, what is the technology, how will it commercialize ALD? 

Photo of Riikka after visiting ALD NanoSolutions March 18, 2014. (I cannot recall who took the photograph upon my request.  I will be to happy to add the name of the photographer here if the person who remembers to have taken the photo, will contact me.) 

Fast forward more than a decade. In 2014, I had a chance to travel to Boulder and visit Prof. Steven George and his group. At this moment, I worked as a Senior Scientist at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland.

ALD Russia 2015 workshop: travel notes by Riikka Puurunen

Below you find my travel report from the ALD Russia workshop in Dolgoprudny, Moscow region, September 2015. Originally, this travel report was published as a stand-along text through Google docs and also through through BALD Engineering blog. 

After the ALD Russia workshop, this ALD History blog has been created, and one travel report published in it (St. Petersburg, 2015, Puurunen). Since the ALD Russia workshop was historical in nature in many ways, and since it will be wise to collect ALD-history-related travel reports in one place, I want to publish the travel report here again. To this version, I have added a significant number of previously unpublished photographic material.