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).