Farewell to european-ald.net? Future of vph-ald.com?

Related to COST network "MP1402 - Hooking together European research in atomic layer deposition (HERALD)", https://www.cost.eu/actions/MP1402/#tabs|Name:overview, the european-ald.net website appears to no longer exist. When exactly did the website disappear, is not clear to the blog author, but it was not accessible on April 21, 2020 (see Twitter). The Internet archive contains some snapshots from the site, see e.g. https://web.archive.org/web/20190116224057/https://www.european-ald.net/.

The european-ald.net website had lots of useful contents. At the time of writing this blog post, it was unclear to the author if the vanishing is of permanent nature. Websites come with a cost and need maintenance, and it is understandable that they are not forever. If the european-ald.net is permanently gone, it is not the first useful ALD-related site to disappear: an earlier blog post discussed the ending of aldpulse.com (http://aldhistory.blogspot.com/2016/11/aldpulsecom-stops-and-moves-into-history.html). The Final Achievement Report of the HERALD COST action remains accessible on the COST site, https://www.cost.eu/actions/MP1402/#tabs|Name:overview. Thank you once more to Dr. Simon Elliott for setting up and skilfully coordinating the HERALD COST network, and to all who participated. To this blog's author, the HERALD COST network was certainly useful.

Related to the vph-ald.com website that collects together the materials of the Virtual Project on the History of ALD (VPHA), the same principles appear as for any other website.

HERALD COST MP1402 event in Riika (Riga), Latvia

On Monday May 22nd, I visited Riika (Riga), Latvia, giving an invited talk at an event called "ALD nanotechnology: advances, prospects and applications" organized within the framework of the HERALD COST action MP1402 (http://www.european-ald.net/). The programme of the event, as provided by the organizers in advance, is copied at the end of this post.  

My presentation was entitled "On the history and future of ALD: VPHA, conformality analysis, mechanisms". The presentation explained the Virtual Project on the History of ALD (more volunteers are still welcome); introduced the PillarHall ALD conformality test structures developed at VTT (with a modelling example, too!) where we welcome more proof-of-concept partners; and pointed out the existing different views and a need to understand better the "model ALD process" trimethylaluminium-water. The presentation was dedicated to the memory of Mr. Sven Lindfors (1945-2017). At the end, I called for support letters to nominate Suntola and ALD for the Millennium Technology Prize 2018 (more to come on this in another post later). 

The presentation slides can be viewed in SlideShare. Additionally, Aalto University uses a tool called Panopto, with I tried, and with which I very easily could record my talk for later reference. A tool to be used in the future, too! The Panopto record can be viewed here.     

Some photos related to the event/this post below.

ALD 2016: Travel notes

Updated 28.8.2016

The 16th International Conference on Atomic Layer Deposition ALD2016 (http://www.ald2016.ie), including the 3rd International Workshop on Atomic Layer Etching, was organized in Dublin, Ireland, July 24-27, 2016. I had a pleasure to participate at the conference as a speaker, poster presenter, and as an International Programme Committee member. This blog post shares my travel notes from conference, thereby continuing my series on travel notes first written for the ALD Russia 2015 workshop and thereafter for Baltic ALD 2015, my St Petersburg visit Nov 2015, and HERALD Helsinki seminar May 2016.

ALD 2016 conference chairs Simon Elliott and Jonas Sundqvist. Photo from Twitter, @jv3sund. 

Since the first American Vacuum Society Topical Conference on Atomic Layer Deposition  in Monterey CA 2001, the international ALD conference series organized every odd year in USA by the AVS and every even year outside USA in collaboration with AVS, has evolved into a major event that provides the best possible snapshot of ALD at the forefront of science at academia and industry alike. There were more than 800 registered participants at the meeting, of which about 50% were industrial; and about 400 presentations, of which about 10% were industrial. The conference lasted for three days and comprised maximum four parallel sessions and two days of poster sessions. All presentations were recorded and will be made available on a DVD after the conference (past DVDs can be bought from AVS by contacting heather@ avs.org).

VPHA HERALD Helsinki presentation files in vph-ald.com

Next week, the Finnish Centre of Excellence on Atomic Layer Deposition (ALDCoE) will organize a HERALD COST Action MP1402 workshop "ALD precursors and processes" in Helsinki (May 23-24). There will be top-class invited speakers, such as Prof. Jaan Aarik (University of Tartu), Prof. Christophe Detavernier (Ghent University), Prof. Erwin Kessels (Eindhoven University of Technology), Prof. Marc Heyns (IMEC), and Dr. Dennis Hausmann (LAM Research) --- access the full list at http://www.aldcoe.fi/herald/index.html.

ALDCoE participants and other ALD players in Finland will present their work in posters at the event, with associated 1-min 1-slide introductory talks. VPHA will have an organizational poster at the event: "Virtual project on the history of ALD: overview and current status." You can access the abstract, poster and one-slider through the VPHA webpage, http://vph-ald.com/ALD-history-publications.html, which contains a collection of references and links to significant publications dealing with the history of ALD. (If you notice that there is an ALD history -related publication missing in this page, please let us know, e.g. by emailing info@ vph-ald.com.)

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

VPHA listed as a Collaboration in european-ald.net

Today, Virtual Project on the History of ALD was created as a Collaboration on the website of the COST Action MP1402 - HERALD, "Hooking together European Research in Atomic Layer Deposition", european-ald.net.

To get started, people who are involved in VPHA and who already have profiles on the HERALD website were listed (rather randomly) at the Collaboration. Later, a more thorough edit for co-authors can be made, after the abstract to Ireland ALD 2016 has been sent (at the moment, the abstract has 50 co-authors from 15 countries). I am not very familiar with the european-ald.net website, but I do think that people can add these collaborations to their profiles already.

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

Baltic ALD 2015, Tartu: travel notes by Riikka Puurunen

The 13th International Baltic Conference on Atomic Layer Deposition, Baltic ALD 2015 was organised in Tartu, Estonia, September 28-29, 2015. Conference chairs were Prof. Jaan Aarik and Dr. Kaupo Kukli. Conference website: http://www.bald2015.ee/. Right after the conference, on September 30, 2015, there was the yearly meeting day of the HERALD COST network on ALD (http://www.european-ald.net/).

I have not visited Tartu before, and it was very interesting to attend this Baltic ALD conference in the historical city of Tartu, where the first report of ALD (then, ALE) is from year 1983. This post in the ALD History Blog finally shares my travel notes from Baltic ALD, both as text and photos. BALD Engineering collected a "photo show" during the event, which can be found here. In Twitter, post and pictures from Baltic ALD conferences can be found back with hashtag #BalticALD.

Colours, colours! The Baltic ALD 2015 conference was organized at the Physicum building of Tartu University. Photo by Riikka Puurunen. 

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

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 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.