On how I came up with the "periodic table of ALD processes"

IUPAC, https://www.iypt2019.org/: "1869 is considered as the year of discovery of the Periodic System by Dmitri Mendeleev. 2019 will be the 150th anniversary of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements and has therefore been proclaimed the "International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements (IYPT2019)" by the United Nations General Assembly and UNESCO."

In atomic layer deposition, for which Tuomo Suntola in 2018 received the Millennium Technology Prize, the periodic table is a central tool. This was recently highlighted in the Atomic Limits blog, who created a colourful update of the periodic table of ALD processes which I originally created for a review article in 2005 and which was updated for another review article in 2013. In this post, I tell a bit more on how that "periodic table of ALD" was born and updated. But first: a joint picture with Dmitry Mendeleev in St. Petersburg State University, taken - while visiting Prof. Victor Drozd in November 2015 - to honor this great chemist from St. Petersburg.

Then-Dr. Riikka Puurunen (now Prof.) and statue of Prof. Dmitry Mendeleev in the hall of St. Petersburg State University. Photo taken upon request by Prof. Victor Drozd. November 11, 2015. Originally published in http://aldhistory.blogspot.com/2015/11/travel-notes-st-petersburg-puurunen.html.

To the story.

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.

About the unique article codes used in VPHA {AuthorYearOptionalindex}

A note about the unique VPHA publication codes, which are given in curly brackets for each article listed in the ALD-history-evolving-file and also in VPHA-reading-overview-file. 

• The unique codes are in the form {AuthorYearOptionalindex}, for example {Koltsov1969b}.    
• The codes are used for quick identification purposes of different articles. They must remain unique and cannot therefore be issued without central coordination. In practice in VPHA, the codes have been managed so far by Yury & Riikka (rather unnoticeably in the background). Questions --> email info@ vph-ald.com (remove the space). 
• In addition to functioning as unique identification in VPHA, the codes enable the writing of large documents with LaTeX  with automatic generation of reference lists with BibTeX. 
• As background info: in VPHA, we build upon the list of unique codes used for generating the literature lists of the two ALD review articles published in Journal of Applied Physics (Applied Physics reviews) in 2005 and 2013 (and Puurunen’s thesis before those). If/when we will write another review article from VPHA (Item 10 partly completed in the VPHA Publication Plan), the codes (and a bibtex file in which they are stored) will again serve for generating the literature list and references. 
• The VPHA participants are requested to avoid using the curly brackets in their comments in the ALD-history-evolving-file for other purposes than these unique publication codes.

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