VPHA & New Year 2016

At the turn of the new year, it is always good to look back on the past year. Significant progress in VPHA occurred in VPHA in 2015 regarding many aspects:

• Better organization to allow the VPHA to proceed "by itself". VPHA-reading-overview-file, VPHA-reading-workflow and info@ vph-ald.com address enable the VPHA participants to find reading that is useful for the progress of the whole VPHA.
• VPHA organizational presentations were delivered at ALD Russia and Baltic ALD. The goal was to invite more people to get interested in VPHA and join it, which succeeded. Still more people are welcome to join, as we are far away from the "target" of 100 active volunteers: at the moment there are 40. 
• Creation of the ALD History Blog, for more visibility and better spreading of information. 
• Last but not least: publication of the ML essay by Malygin, Drozd, Malkov and Smirnov in December 2015 (Item #8 in the VPHA Publication Plan).  In my view, this might very well be the single most important outcome of the whole VPHA. I am very grateful for the authors that they took the time to write the essay; only these authors could write such a detailed account of how ALD evolved under the name Molecular Layering in Soviet Union and Russia since the 1960s. Also I am grateful for VPHA colleagues who helped in January 2015 to define questions that we would like the ML essay to answer.    

VPHA ALD history review 1st co-author email

The message below was sent 18 December to 13 prospective co-authors of the scientific VPHA ALD History Review. Those potentially interested in co-authoring the review article but who did not receive the initial email, please contact me at firstname.lastname@vtt.fi no later than by the end of January 2016. Alternatively, you let us know of your interest through emailing info@ vph-ald.com.

The ML essay indicated "to be published soon" has in the meantime been published (link).

Begin forwarded message:

Updates made to VPHA website http://vph-ald.com

With the publication of the Molecular Layering essay by Malygin et al., I was happy to update the VPHA webpage http://vph-ald.com:

Molecular Layering essay by Malygin et al. published

It is my great pleasure to inform that the essay by Malygin et al. has finally been published. This is Item #8 in the VPHA Publication Plan.

Link: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cvde.201502013/abstract

Abstract: This essay is dedicated to the history of creation and development of the molecular layering technique (ML) which, in the modern community of non-Russian scientists, is commonly referred to as atomic layer deposition (ALD). Basic research in the field of chemical transformations of solid surfaces using the ML method in the light of the “framework” hypothesis proposed by V. B. Aleskovskii in 1952 is discussed. A number of questions raised by international scientists including those involved in the Virtual Project on the History of ALD (VPHA, 2013), and scientists from conferences in Helsinki (Finland, May 2014.), Kyoto (Japan, June 2014), and personal communications amongst peers are addressed. For the first time in English, this article provides information about V. B. Aleskovskii and S. I. Kol'tsov who are closely associated with development of the ML technique in the Soviet Union. This paper also informs the scientific community about research groups currently engaged in ML research in Russia and introduces the scientific school of “Chemistry of highly organized substances”, founded and supervised by V. B. Aleskovskii. 

New open file: VPHA-ALD-terminology

Following suggestions received after the previous VPHA email update (17.12.), a new open file has been set up for VPHA co-editing, called VPHA-ALD-terminology. We will collect here ALD-specific terminology that people would like to discuss.

• Direct link here. 
• The link can also be found through the page http://vph-ald.com/VPHAopenfiles.html.

VPHA status update email 2015-12-17

The VPHA email update was sent to 39 co-authors and 31 prospective co-authors: 

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Dear current and prospective VPHA co-authors,

It is time for this year’s the last update regarding the Virtual Project on the History of ALD (VPHA). Please find below updates on six topics:

1.    ML essay

2.    Wikipedia update

3.    Recent ALD History Blog posts

4.    VPHA in numbers

5.    Personal invitations to join the ALD history reading

6.    History of ALD terminology 

Significant progress has taken place in VPHA this year. When many small individual contributions are summed up together, the result can be very significant. Thank you for everyone’s contributions, may it be big or small!

VPHA's ALD History Review begins with formulation of questions (DL Jan 10)

In VPHA, we have started to prepare for the general scientific review on the history of ALD, Item #10 in the VPHA Publication Plan. The first step towards the review is that we will collect questions to which the review should answer, and other suggestions regarding the review. All current and potential future VPHA co-authors are welcome to participate in this questions-forming activity.

VPHA ALD 2016 preparation begins: more co-authors welcome

In VPHA, we are starting to prepare for the final scientific presentation: a presentation at the ALD 2016 conference in Ireland. This is Item #9 in the VPHA Publication Plan.

The first abstract draft has been sent to all VPHA co-authors - 39 at the moment -  to view and comment, and also to prospective co-authors (> 20). The figure below shows the current distribution per country of VPHA co-authors. At the moment, 347 publications are listed for reading in VPHA, and 367 comments on these have been written. In total, about 1000 comments should be written, so there is obviously still quite some work to do. More volunteers are welcome, and needed, to bring the work to a good end.

Distribution of the VPHA co-authors (total of 39) per country (total of 11), as of December 10, 2015.

Wikipedia ALD update: Google docs and Twitter

The general activities of VPHA towards #11 in Publication Plan, updating Wikipedia, are taking the first steps. Related to this:

• A collaborative open Google docs file has been created: WikiALD-update-WIP. Everyone can view and comment on the file, and selected people have editing rights.  
• A new Twitter hashtag has been created to keep track of the discussisons: #WikiALD.

Wikipedia, Suntola, forefront of science and Dynamic Universe

In a previous post, ALD in Wikipedia - status and surprises, I described the results of exploring ALD-related pages in Wikipedia. Today, I want to continue around the same Wikipedia topic, by sharing the story of how I got to know Dr. Tuomo Suntola, the Finnish inventor of ALD. This I do to shed light on the surprising content of his Wikipedia page, namely the fact that ALD is not mentioned there at all.

VPHA status update email 2015-12-07

This status update email below was sent on 7.12.2015 to all VPHA co-authors (39) and registered prospective co-authors (26). 

Would you would like to join the VPHA as a volunteer and as a prospective co-author receive these emails, please send an email to info@ vph-ald.com.

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Dear VPHA co-authors and prospective co-authors,

VPHA has again proceeded in the past weeks. In this VPHA status email, please find below info regarding:

1. VPHA abstract to Ireland ALD 2016 conference (#9 in the Publication Plan)
2. General scientific review on the history of ALD (#10 in the Publication Plan)
3. List of ALD conferences
4. List of ALD reviews
5. ALD in Wikipedia
6. Recent posts in the ALD History Blog
7. VPHA in numbers & invitations to more ALD scientists to join

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. 

Another page under construction: List of ALD reviews

A list of scientific reviews (including books) on ALD is now under construction as a separate page in the ALD History Blog: http://aldhistory.blogspot.fi/p/list-of-reviews.html.

This initial list, started December 3, 2015, contains the list of reviews collected for my (Puurunen's)  review articles in J. Appl. Phys. 2005 and 2013, with some items added for years 2012 on.

There are surely many missing. When you notice missing items that should be added, you can leave a note in the Comment field below with the info to be added, or send me the missing info by email, firstname.lastname@vtt.fi.

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

New page in the ALD History Blog: List of posts

For easy navigation, a new page has been added to the ALD History Blog: list of posts.

You can find it in the Pages list (top right of the page), as well as through this link: http://aldhistory.blogspot.fi/p/list-of-posts.html.

The goal is to update this page after each full month. Now the list shows the posts of October and November 2015.

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

Page under construction: List of ALD conferences

I have started to build a page inside the ALD History Blog, to list the past and future ALD conferences and workshops. You can find the page under construction already here: http://aldhistory.blogspot.fi/p/ald-conferences.html.

There are many missing items still. If you would like to help me with filling the info, you can contact me (1) by leaving a comment in the comment field after this post or after the page itself, or (2) emailing to my work address, firstname.lastname@vtt.fi. Please include a descriptive title in your email, e.g., "ALD Blog: addition to the ALD conference list" or alike, not to be overlooked. To be included in the list, the conference should have a strong emphasis on ALD (>50%).

Nov 29: Story of a cover image, "Reconstruction of the first ALE experiment"

November 29, 2014, it was exactly 40 years since the filing of the first patent on Atomic Layer Epitaxy by Suntola and Antson (FIN 52359). To celebrate this, the Finnish Centre of Excellence on Atomic Layer Deposition (ALDCoE) released the material of the exhibition "40 Years of ALD in Finland - Photos, Stories" (FinALD40) in the internet. Originally, this exhibition had been created for the Baltic ALD 2014 conference in Helsinki, May 12-13, 2014.

Today, one year later, I want to tell you the story behind the cover image of the internet release of the the FinALD40 exhibition material. The cover image is called: "reconstruction of the first ALE experiment" and is shown in the next figure.

"Reconstruction of the first ALE experiment". © Riikka Puurunen 2014

Molecular Layering (ML) presentations at VPHA website

An essay is soon to be published of the "Molecular Layering (ML) branch" of Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) in the Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) journal:

• Essay by A. A. Malygin, V. E. Drozd, A. A. Malkov, V. M. Smirnov, "From V. B. Aleskovskii’s "Framework" Hypothesis to the Method of Molecular Layering/Atomic Layer Deposition", Chemical Vapor Deposition, in press (2015).

This essay will very nicely complement an earlier ALD history essay in the CVD journal, which I (Riikka Puurunen) wrote in close collaboration with the Finnish inventor of ALD Dr. Tuomo Suntola on the "Atomic Layer Epitaxy (ALE)" branch of ALD in 2014. 

• Essay by R. L. Puurunen, "A short history of Atomic Layer Deposition: Tuomo Suntola's Atomic Layer Epitaxy", Chemical Vapor Deposition 20 (2014) 332-344, doi: 10.1002/cvde.201402012. Open Access. Full essay.

While waiting for the ML essay to be published, we can already access some materials related to Molecular Layering through recent presentations of two authors of the essay, Prof. Anatoly Malygin and Prof. Victor Drozd.

Statistics after one month of the ALD History Blog

It is now about a month since this blog (http//aldhistory.blogspot.fi) was publicly announced (Oct 28, related post). In the short time, the blog has evolved in many ways, including getting an own logo. The blog has found its early audience.

In this post, I want to share with you information on the statistics behind the blog: where do the readers come from geographically, what are the sources linking to the blog, and what are the most popular blog topics. I can share all this information thanks to the excellent statistics that Blogger automatically collects.

The next image shows an overview of the statistics from during the previous month. The total number of pageviews has been slightly more than 1000 on a month's time. The number of views per day varies; new posts attract most visitors. The highest number of views, 189 per day on November 20, came on the day when the blog's Twitter companion was created.

Overview of the viewing statistics of the ALD History Blog for the last month (Oct 29 - Nov 27). 

1000 pageviews in the ALD History Blog

In less than a month, the ALD History Blog has received 1000 pageviews. The exact 1000-views moment has been captured in the image below. The fact that the number of views rises this fast signifies that there is a need for the ALD History Blog and it probably fills some kind of a gap. The latest peak in the statistics is from yesterday, and it originates from the creation of the Twitter companion of the ALD History Blog, @aldhistoryblog, https://twitter.com/aldhistoryblog. 

Later, I intend to share some more detailed viewing statistics. Already I can tell that the Top 5 countries in the viewing statistics are (in this order): Finland, USA, Germany, Russia, and France. 

Screen capture from the ALD History Blog, November 21, 2015.

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

ALD History Blog has a Twitter companion

A Twitter companion has just been created for the ALD History Blog. The Twitter user name is: @aldhistoryblog.

My aim is to share all posts published in the ALD History Blog in Twitter, too. I will start by tweeting all the posts published so far - 17 before this post, I think.

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

ALD History Blog has a logo

Let me introduce the new logo of the ALD History Blog: 

I was requested to create a logotype for the ALD History blog by Jonas Sundqvist, who writes the excellent BALD Engineering blog on ALD.

This new "ALD History Blog logo" has been modified from the "ALD History logo", which I created in June 2013, when we were starting the Virtual Project on the History of ALD (VPHA). The similarity should remind one of the close connection between this blog and the VPHA, the ALD History LinkedIn group, and the webpage http://vph-ald.com. There are differences, too, and it will be indeed good to have a separate logo. Thank you, Jonas, for the suggestion to create one!  

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

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.

VPHA status update 2015-11-18

This status update email below was sent on 18.11.2015 to all VPHA co-authors (38) and registered prospective co-authors (26). 

Would you would like to join the VPHA as a volunteer and as a prospective co-author receive these emails, please send an email to info@ vph-ald.com.

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Dear VPHA co-authors and prospective co-authors,

Things related to the Virtual Project on the History of ALD have proceeded during the previous weeks. Please find below updates regarding:

1.    Status of the ML essay

2.    Travel report from St Petersburg

3.    ALD History blog posts

4.    VPHA in numbers

5.    General scientific ALD history review

6.    Sponsoring of Open Access for the ML essay

New blog on ALD: "Beneq Blog: A billion seconds"

A new ALD blog has just been initiated: "Beneq Blog: A billion seconds." Link: http://www.beneq.com/blog.

The first post, entitled "Stories from the home of ALD," tells of what the post will be about. Link to the post: http://www.beneq.com/blog/201511/billion-seconds.html. Quoting from under the subsection "Towards a thinner world":

"The plan is to publish in the blog news about our latest products of course, but also to write background stories about the people and technology behind our services. We also want to share our vision about where we believe the business is heading, and report where our displays are used and what our customers do with the soon two hundred Beneq ALD machines around the world."

I warmly welcome the new blog and wish it success! When there are history-related posts, I intend to link to them in this ALD History Blog.

This first post has a very nice photo from Espoo, Finland, of the Lohja factory to produce electroluminescent displays (photo from 1984?). This factory is also mentioned in my (Riikka Puurunen's) recent essay about the history of ALD, "A Short History of Atomic Layer Deposition: Tuomo Suntola's Atomic Layer Epitaxy", published in the Chemical Vapor Deposition journal, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cvde.201402012/full.

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

Travel notes, St Petersburg, November 2015, by Riikka Puurunen

I had the pleasure of visiting St. Petersburg in November 2015. This was my second visit to St. Petersburg related to ALD; the first was in November 2013, when I gave a talk at the opening seminar of Beneq AppLab at ETU (LETI). The purpose of this visit in Nov 2015 was to give an invited talk on the state-of-art of ALD at the Flexible Electronics conference organized by LETI - ETU (electrotechnical university). Now, as also in 2013, I could also meet local ALD colleagues, including the "grand old names" of Molecular Layering (ML)-ALD, Prof. Anatoly Malygin and Prof. Victor Drozd.

For Finnish readers: Scientific aphorisms sought in competition by Aforismiyhdistys and Tieteen päivät

Scientific aphorisms in Finnish language are sought in a competition by Aforismiyhdistys ("Aphorism club") and Tieteen päivät ("Finnish Science days"): http://aforismiyhdistys.fi/tiedeaforismikilpailu/. The competition is open until the end of year 2015.

In addition to sending in one's own aphorisms, one can send in influental words by other people, with proper citation.

I can very well think that Suntola and the many other co-workers who have developed and industrialized ALD in Finland have left behind powerful words to remember. Finnish colleagues: this is the right time to think back on words that are worth remembering, and to send them in.

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

BALD Engineering blogs about Tuomo Suntola's overview on ALD

Jonas Sundqvist from BALD Engineering has published a nice blog post discussing the ALD webpage of Dr. Tuomo Suntola, the Finnish inventor of ALD. See the full post at http://baldengineering.blogspot.de/2015/11/tuomo-suntola-overview-on-atomic-layer.html. In the words of Jonas Sundqvist:

"I think that we all today have to thank Suntola and his co-workers like Sven Lindfors < > and others for making all this possible. Just think about it - would we all today enjoy living and working in a fast growing technological field of ALD without this work  that started in the 70´s and persisted through until it went global in the 90´s and beyond until today?"

HERALD COST action news: More volunteers invited to contribute to VPHA

A news item has been published on Friday, 6.11.2015. Please find the invitation text below. Link to the news item: https://www.european-ald.net/news/more-volunteers-invited-contribute-vpha

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"Virtual Project on the History of ALD (VPHA), started in July 2013, is looking fore more voluntary participants, to help find answers to questions related to early days of ALD. Many will know that ALD has been invented twice under different names, Atomic Layer Epitaxy and Molecular Layering. Especially the works made under the name Molecular Layering have remained poorly known (and cited).

VPHA status update email 2015-10-31

This email was sent on 31.10.2015 to all VPHA co-authors (38) and registered prospective co-authors (26). 

Would you would like to join the VPHA as a volunteer and as a prospective co-author receive these emails, please send an email to info@ vph-ald.com.

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Dear VPHA co-authors and prospective co-authors,

Progress has taken place in VPHA during the one and the half weeks regarding many aspects. Please find info below regarding:

1. Update to the VPHA Introduction and Invitation to participate;
2. Update to the ALD-history-evolving-file, including TOC addition
3. New open file created: VPHA-translations;
4. Small update made to Wikipedia;
5. VPHA ALD History blog.

Best regards,

Riikka, the voluntary 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

< >, fi.linkedin.com/in/riikkapuurunen, twitter.com/rlpuu

1) Update to the VPHA Introduction and Invitation to participate  

Please find the updated Introduction and Invitation to participate here: http://vph-ald.com/Introduction%20and%20invitation%20to%20participate.html. The old version, from in July 2013, is included at the end of the file.

The updated version is dated October 25, 2015, and it is signed by Riikka Puurunen (VTT, Finland), Yury Koshtyal (Ioffe Institute, Russia), Henrik Pedersen (Linköping University, Sweden), Ruud Van Ommen (Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands), and Jonas Sundqvist (Technische Universität Dresden, Germany; Lund University, Sweden).

2) Update to ALD-history-evolving-file, including TOC addition

The ALD-history-evolving-file has been updated, mainly to accommodate the Update to the Introduction. At the same time, a Table of Contents (TOC) was added to the very beginning of the file. This will make it easier to navigate in this large file.  

Another way to navigate is, of course, the search function. With this, one can easily locate a particular reference, once you know the author or, even better, the unique code of the reference as is used in the VPHA - e.g. {Aleskovskii1974} or {Suntola1985}.

3) New open file created: VPHA-translations

A new open Google docs file has been created for VPHA: “VPHA-translations”. All translations of early ALD works made by VPHA participants will be collected in this file. You can find a link to it at http://vph-ald.com/VPHAopenfiles.html.

Currently, it contains translations of parts of the thesis of Aleskovskii and parts of the thesis by Drozd. Thank you to Maria Berdova, Fred Roozeboom and Victor Drozd for the current translations and for the permission to share them in this file.   

The VPHA-translations file can be viewed by everyone in real time. Individual commenting/editing permissions can be granted upon request.  

4) Small update to Wikipedia

One of the action items in the Virtual Project on the History of ALD (VPHA) is to update the Wikipedia Atomic Layer Deposition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_layer_deposition history description (see Publication Plan).

A small important modification was recently made, as the "ALE Essay" was added to the reference list to the following statement. (Thanks to Jonas Sundqvist for taking care of this.) The text reads currently as follows. Before the edit, this same statement was there, without any reference to further source of information.

"It was the work of Dr Tuomo Suntola and coworkers in Finland in mid-1970s that made the scientific idea a true thin film deposition technology and took that into an industrial use and worldwide awareness.^[4] "

Ref 4: Riikka L. Puurunen, A Short History of Atomic Layer Deposition: Tuomo Suntola’s Atomic Layer Epitaxy, Chemical Vapor Deposition, 2014, Vol 20, Issue 10-11-12, pages 332-344, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cvde.201402012/full

5) VPHA ALD History blog

A blog has been created to accompany the VPHA website and the LinkedIn ALD History group. You can find the blog at http://aldhistory.blogspot.fi. There is also a link to the blog at the left-side quick launch bar in http://vph-ald.com.   

The blog idea is new, and how it will be used, will probably evolve with time. There are many advantages of having the blog, among others, easiness of writing, sharing, and archiving. The balance between emails-LinkedIn-VPHAblog is still to be seen, all three methods of updating will in any case continue.

About the use of the blog:

• Expect to get updates on the status and progress of VPHA
• The will also be posts regarding past events (VPHA started in 2013) and the general background of the VPHA ALD history project
• There can be guest posts, too
• You can order new posts by email for easy following
• The label cloud, blog archive and search function help one to navigate and find relevant posts

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

New: VPHA ALD history translations file

A new file has been created: VPHA-translations. One can access it through http://vph-ald.com/VPHAopenfiles.html. In this file, we collect the translations made in the Virtual Project on the History of ALD (VPHA) for early publications on Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD).  The translations in this file are informal, work-in-progess type of translations made by VPHA volunteers. Changes, additions, removals are all possible.

As of 30.10.2015, the file contains two translations. Both represent parts significant academic theses regarding Molacular Layering, originally in Russian. One is the Doctor of science thesis by Aleskovskii in 1952 and the other the Candidate of Science (corresponds roughly to PhD) by Drozd in 1978. Thanks to Maria Berdova, Fred Roozeboom and Victor Drozd for the translations and for the permission to include them in this file for the referral by others.

Some comments have already been given in VPHA reading regarding these theses, written in the ALD-history-evolving file, also accessible through http://vph-ald.com/VPHAopenfiles.html. One can search with the current VPHA codes  {Aleskovskii1952} and {Drozd1978-PhD} to find them easily in the large file.  The Aleskovskii thesis already has several comments made by the VPHA authors; more comments on the significance are still welcome. Regarding the Drozd thesis, we would still need one more comment, to have the minimum number of three that we would like to have for each publication in VPHA.

VPHA presentations at ALD Russia and Baltic ALD invite more people to join

In September 2015, two organisational presentations were published related to VPHA, first at ALD Russia in Dolgoprudny, Moscow region, and the following week at Baltic ALD in Tartu, with the goal to invite more people to join the VPHA reading work. The greatest need currently is for people who know both English and Russian languages. Also people with skills of Estonian, Finnish, French, German, and Japanese are needed (and maybe some languages not listed).

Publication details and links:

• Oral presentation, "Virtual Project on the History of ALD: overview and current status", by R. L. Puurunen, Yu. Koshtyal, H. Pedersen, J. R. van Ommen, J. Sundqvist, International workshop Atomic Layer Deposition Russia 2015, 21-23 September, 2015, Moscow-Dolgoprudny, Russia. Abstract. Slides. 
• Poster presentation, "Virtual Project on the History of ALD: overview and current status", by R. L. Puurunen, Yu. Koshtyal, H. Pedersen, J. R. van Ommen, J. Sundqvist, 13th International Baltic Conference on Atomic Layer Deposition, September 28-29, 2015, Tartu, Estonia. Abstract. Poster. 

Motivation of the VPHA, from the Baltic ALD poster:

"VPHA background: Why? What? When? ALD developed under the names • Molecular Layering ML; Молекулярное Наслаивание • Atomic Layer Epitaxy ALE Especially the work made under the name Molecular Layering has been poorly known and cited"

From the Baltic ALD poster, VPHA in numbers:

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Virtual Project on the History of ALD (VPHA), http://vph-ald.com, in atmosphere of Openness, Respect, and Trust.

VPHA ALD history blog goes public

Three days after its initiation, the VPHA ALD history blog at http://aldhistory.blogspot.fi is sufficiently ready to be released for search engines to find. Improvements to the appearance and contents of the blog will be made as new ideas come.

• Expect to get updates on the status and progress of VPHA
• The will also be posts regarding past events (VPHA started in 2013) and the general background of the VPHA ALD history project 
• There can be guest posts, too
• You can order new posts by email for easy following
• The label cloud, blog archive and search function help one to navigate and find relevant posts 

VPHA co-authors, other Atomic Layer Deposition scientists, other scientists, industry experts, historians, journalists, and other interested folks, welcome! I hope that you will find interesting content here. Feel free to leave (polite) comments.


Virtual Project on the History of ALD (VPHA), http://vph-ald.com, in atmosphere of Openness, Respect, and Trust.

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Updated 10.11.2015: VPHA ALD blog replaced with VPHA ALD history blog

Minor Wikipedia update: ALE essay added

One of the action items in the Virtual Project on the History of ALD (VPHA) is to update the Wikipedia Atomic Layer Deposition section https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_layer_deposition, what comes to the history description (see Publication Plan).

Today, a minor important modification was made, as the "ALE Essay" was added to the reference list to the following statement. Before today, this same statement was there, but without any reference to further sources.

"It was the work of Dr Tuomo Suntola and coworkers in Finland in mid-1970s that made the scientific idea a true thin film deposition technology and took that into an industrial use and worldwide awareness.^[4] "

• Ref 4: Riikka L. Puurunen, A Short History of Atomic Layer Deposition: Tuomo Suntola’s Atomic Layer Epitaxy, Chemical Vapor Deposition, 2014, Vol 20, Issue 10-11-12, pages 332-344, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cvde.201402012/full

VPHA status update 2015-10-21

An email status update was sent on October 21, 2015, to VPHA co-authors and prospective co-authors. Shortened version below. 

If you would like to get the full status updates by email, please contact the VPHA organizers by sending email to info@ vph-ald.com or through the LinkedIn ALD History group. The VPHA update emails are always sent with receiving addresses in the bcc field, to avoid large reply-to-all email chains. 

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Significant progress has taken place regarding the Virtual Project on the History of ALD within the past weeks. Please find below an update considering six topics.

ALD-history-evolving-file has a table of contents

The ALD-history-evolving-file has been updated today, mainly to accommodate the Update to the Introduction. At the same time, to make it easier to navigate in this large file, a Table of Contents (TOC) was added to the very beginning of the file.

Another way to navigate is, of course, the search function. With this, one can easily locate a particular reference, once you know the author or, even better, the unique code of the reference as is used in the VPHA - e.g. {Aleskovskii1974} or {Suntola1985}.

VPHA: Update to Introduction and Invitation to participate

The Virtual Project on the History of ALD (VPHA) has as of today (October 25, 2015) existed for two years and three months. A lot of progress has been booked since the beginning, while there is still a significant amount of work to do, too.

The original "Introduction and Invitation to participate" of the volunteer-based VPHA was published on July 25, 2013. The invitation to participate is still valid, as we plan to continue VPHA until summer 2016.

Because of the progress, we thought that it would be good to create an update for the Introduction, to guide the reader to the current information. The Update as well as the original Introduction can be found on the vph-ald.com webpage and are copied in full below.

VPHA blog created

Blog created October 25, 2015.