VPHA status update 2016-10-30

The email below was sent to 75 VPHA co-authors and 38 prospective co-authors. 

From: Puurunen Riikka
Sent: 30. lokakuuta 2016 17:26
To: info@ vph-ald.com
Cc: Puurunen Riikka; Sundqvist Jonas
Subject: VPHA status update 30.10.2016

Dear VPHA co-authors and prospective co-authors,

With this update, I would like to give an overview of the recent and future activities of the Virtual Project on the History of ALD (VPHA). The previous update was made on August 15, 2016, and this status update reviews the progress since then.  Read more below on the following topics:

• Status of VPHA JVSTA manuscript
• Organizational VPHA presentation at Baltic ALD 2016, St. Petersburg
• ALD-history-evolving-file: reading and commenting status
• New hashtags in Twitter related to ALD’s history
• ALD History Blog one year old
• ALD History Blog posts on other topics
• Next steps 

One year of ALD History Blog: statistics shared

Updated 28.10.2016
ALD History Blog was created on October 25, 2015 (it went public on Oct 28). I have shared statistics after 1 month, three months and half a year. This post completes the series and presents statistics after one year of the blog. A recent post was also written of the learnings related to having the blog. Here are some key numbers:

• In total 149 posts have been published before this post. Thus, there have been on average almost three posts per week. 
• The total number of views is above 16 100, giving about 44 views per day on average.   
• Most popular posts, 
• last 7 days: "Term "growth per cycle" (GPC) gaining wider use"
• last 30 days: "Baltic ALD 2016, St. Petersburg: travel notes by Puurunen"
• all times: "ALD 2016: Travel notes"
• Most pageviews, 
• last month: United States > Finland > Japan > France
• all times: United States > Finland > Russia > France
• Most important referring sites: LinkedIn, Twitter, Google 

Then, to the screen captures showing the statistics.  --- I am especially happy of the attention from Japan in the last months. This is because we are still perfecting VPHA's list of early ALD publications up to 1986, and I suspect that we are missing several Japanese publications by Jun-ichi Nishizawa and collaborators. We would need Japanese volunteer(s) in VPHA to get all those works included in the worldwide lists. Those interested to participate in VPHA can contact info@ vph-ald.com (delete the space).

One year of ALD History Blog: some learnings

One year ago, I became a blogger: ALD History Blog was created on October 25, 2015 (it went public on October 28).

ALD History Blog was created predominantly to help in the coordination of the Virtual Project on the History of ALD (VPHA). Before the blog, I used email for coordination and additionally published short notes in Twitter (as @rlpuu) and in the LinkedIn ALD History group. Clear benefits of a blog are e.g. the wealth of contents that can be included (e.g., length of post, links, pictures, videos, ...) and the unlimited internet access/search engine visibility.

Blogging - similarly as the coordination of the VPHA - has brought along many new experiences and learnings. A year after starting the blog, I thought it would be a good idea to summarise the main learnings, to help others who might consider starting a topical science blog.

VPHA Baltic ALD 2016 presentation: live record in Youtube

Live record of the invited organizational end presentation of Virtual Project on the History of ALD (VPHA) at the 14th International Baltic Conference on Atomic Layer Deposition "Baltic ALD 2016" in St. Petersburg, October 3, 2016, has now been uploaded in Youtube. The presentation is entitled "On the history of ALD and the VPHA project," has six co-authors and was delivered by the voluntary coordinator of VPHA, Dr. Riikka Puurunen from VTT, Finland.

Screen capture from Youtube video https://youtu.be/DIArUktQ8xs by Riikka Puurunen. 

Related links:

New Twitter hashtag: #ALDepQuote

After creating the hashtag #suntolaquote, it soon occurred to me that a general ALD-related hashtag for memorable words of all people and all times could be useful, too. Namely, during the VPHA ALD history project, I have heard from many people around the world things worth remembering, and other people will have encountered other memorable things.

To collect together famous (-to-be) ALD-related words, I yesteday created a new hashtag, #ALDepquote - feel free to join and use in Twitter.  

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

New Twitter hashtag: #suntolaquote

Dr. Tuomo Suntola, the Finnish inventor of atomic layer deposition (ALD), has said many things worthwhile to remember.

About a year ago, I wrote how scientific aphorisms are collected in Finland. Now, I realized that Twitter is an excellent place to remember and spread powerful words by powerful persons. Even better: they can easily be collected together by a common hashtag. Feel free to join and share in Twitter words to remember by Suntola, using the just-created hashtag: #suntolaquote.  

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

Term "growth per cycle" (GPC) gaining wider use

"Growth per cycle (GPC)" (unit e.g., nm) and "growth rate" (unit e.g., nm/cyc) have been described as alternative names to denote the time-independent amount of material deposited in a completed atomic layer deposition (ALD) cycle. The recent Baltic ALD 2016 conference confirmed the trend which I have noticed already earlier: the ALD community more and more shifts to use GPC.

I have been advocating the use of GPC since the early 2000s. A bit of history may be in place to explain why I chose to use GPC in the first place---how did it all get started? In the following, I will tell how one specific person has played a major role in the background.

VPHA communication: Baltic ALD 2016 presentation & travel report

The email below was sent to 73 VPHA co-authors and 38 prospective co-authors.  

From: Puurunen Riikka
Sent: 9. lokakuuta 2016 12:03
To: info@ vph-ald.com <space added>
Cc: Puurunen Riikka; Sundqvist Jonas
Subject: VPHA: Baltic ALD 2016 presentation & travel report

Dear VPHA co-authors and prospective co-authors,

Last week, the 14th International Baltic Conference on Atomic Layer Deposition was organized in St. Petersburg, Russia (http://www.bald2016.ru/). Similarly as for some earlier ALD conferences, I wrote a travel report from the conference: http://aldhistory.blogspot.fi/2016/10/balticald2016-stpetersburg-travel-notes-puurunen.html. The earlier travel reports (and this one, too) you find from this link.   

I had the honour to give the first invited talk of the Baltic ALD 2016 conference. This is - of course - thanks to the Virtual Project on the History of ALD (VPHA), which we have been collectively working on since July 2013. Link to the VPHA presentation slides: http://vph-ald.com/VPHApublications/VPHA-Puurunen-etal_FINAL_2016-10-03.pdf. Additionally, I had a presentation about conformality investigations of ALD thin films with recently-developed microscopic lateral high-aspect-ratio (LHAR) test structures (more info here and here).

Baltic ALD 2016, St. Petersburg: travel notes by Puurunen

Updated October 9, 2016

The 14th International Baltic Conference on Atomic Layer Deposition (Baltic ALD 2016, http://www.bald2016.ru/) was organized in St. Petersburg, Russia, on October 3-4, 2016.

The conference consisted of one day of invited lectures and one day of contributed talks and posters. The conference venue was Solo Sokos Hotel Palace Bridge (V.o. Birzhevoi Pereulok 2-4, St. Petersburg, 199004) on the Vasilievsky Island. A get-together event was organized on October 2, 2016. The conference chairman was Prof. Vladimir Kutuzov, the rector of St. Petersburg Electrotechnical University"LETI" and the chairman of the International Advisory Board was Prof. Markku Leskelä from the University of Helsinki. Central local organizers were Prof. Nikolay Egorov and Prof. Alexey Ivanov from LETI. Roughly forty persons participated at the conference. I (Riikka Puurunen) had the pleasure to participate at BALD 2016 both as an invited speaker and as a regular contributor. This was the third time that I participated at a Baltic ALD conference; earlier, I have attended the Baltic ALD of 2014 in Helsinki and of 2015 in Tartu (travel report).

Cover letter JVSTA submission

The cover letter of the VPHA JVSTA manuscript submission was as follows.

--- copy of cover letter begins ---

Espoo, Finland, September 30, 2016

Dear Editor of JVSTA,

Please find enclosed a manuscript entitled ”Recommended reading list of early publications on Atomic Layer Deposition—outcome of the Virtual Project on the History of ALD” by Ahvenniemi et al. (in total 62 co-authors).

The manuscript deals with the history of ALD, extending the information shared on early ALD works in a poster presentation at the ALD 2016 conference, Ireland this summer. The manuscript is quite unusual in its contents and its long alphabetical author list. The author list is a result of the large, collaborative project in which the work has been made.  While we have had no formal request to write this manuscript for JVSTA, informally we have been invited to do so by Prof. Gregory Parsons.