Nov 29, 2016: new webpage pillarhall.com

November 29 is the date when the first patent on Atomic Layer Epitaxy, currently known as Atomic Layer Deposition, was filed in 1974.

Forty years after filing the first patent, on the same day in 2014, the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Atomic Layer Deposition (ALDCoE) released the FinALD40 exhibition material. The material is still accessible through the aldcoe.fi and vph-ald.com websites.

Two years later, again on the same day, VTT launched a new website: http://pillarhall.com. This website is related to the microscopic lateral high-aspect-ratio (LHAR) thin film conformality test structure developed at VTT, also known as "PillarHall" (protected trademark). The original ideas that have resulted in the PillarHall test structures have been created by VTT'ers in the ALDCoE project funded by the Academy of Finland and has already resulted in two scientific publications (details in pillarhall.com). The research and development work continues with the University of Helsinki ALD group and many other groups worldwide, as well as in a dedicated "TUTL" project funded by Tekes - the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation.

"What you can't measure, you can't improve". If you are interested in VTT's conformality test structures, please have a look and find the appropriate contact information at the website http://pillarhall.com.

Diced 150 mm silicon wafer with PillarHallTM conformality test chip prototypes. Photo: Riikka Puurunen, VTT, November 16, 2016.

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

ALDpulse.com announces to stop

According to announcement published by ALD Pulse in Facebook, 25.11.2016, aldpulse.com stops with ALD-activities and thereby becomes part of the colourful history of atomic layer deposition (ALD).

ALDpulse.com became active in Spring 2013. As seen from the screen capture, their vision was to become the Home of the ALD community and collect together varied information regarding ALD: ALD Basics, ALD Equipment suppliers, ALD Chemical suppliers, ALD Coating services, ALD-related equipment, and many other. A description of aldpulse.com was included in the FinALD40 exhibition material, accessible through aldcoe.fi website as well as vph-ald.com.

Screen capture from aldpulse.com on Nov 26, 2016.

The information in the ALD Hall Fame in part triggered the VPHA activities (described in VPHA's article, in press in JVSTA as of Nov 26, 2016). The founder of aldpulse.com Annina Titoff helped VPHA to get started by publishing the original "Introduction and invitation to participate" and several announcements thereafter.

I personally would like to thank aldpulse.com for its contribution to the ALD community. Their most memorable part from my viewpoint will be the original Youtube interviews produced by aldpulse, e.g. of Suntola, Sundqvist, Barry, Ahonen and Ritala. I very much hope that this material will stay in Youtube after aldpulse.com stops.

The best of luck wished for the ALD Pulse Team in their new endeavours!

Under construction in VPHA: ALD Thesis List

Working towards the VPHA ALD History Review (Item #10 in the VPHA Publication Plan), we have in VPHA started to build a list of doctoral theses on ALD worldwide. We do this in file "VPHA-ALD-thesis-list", you find a link at http://vph-ald.com/VPHAopenfiles.html. It is a challenge, and perhaps impossible, to create a complete list. Nevertheless, we will give it a try.

As the first step, information already collected on the Finnish and Soviet/Russian theses was combined (sources: FinALD40 exhibition, ML essay)---thank you Oksana for doing this. Currently, the list contains 134 doctoral theses. Next step is to update the list with theses from other countries: for example, Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Estonia, Germany, France, Korea, India, Japan, Norway, Sweden, The Netherlands, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States...  (excuses already for the countries missing from the list).

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

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?"