On how I came up with the "periodic table of ALD processes"

IUPAC, https://www.iypt2019.org/: "1869 is considered as the year of discovery of the Periodic System by Dmitri Mendeleev. 2019 will be the 150th anniversary of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements and has therefore been proclaimed the "International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements (IYPT2019)" by the United Nations General Assembly and UNESCO."

In atomic layer deposition, for which Tuomo Suntola in 2018 received the Millennium Technology Prize, the periodic table is a central tool. This was recently highlighted in the Atomic Limits blog, who created a colourful update of the periodic table of ALD processes which I originally created for a review article in 2005 and which was updated for another review article in 2013. In this post, I tell a bit more on how that "periodic table of ALD" was born and updated. But first: a joint picture with Dmitry Mendeleev in St. Petersburg State University, taken - while visiting Prof. Victor Drozd in November 2015 - to honor this great chemist from St. Petersburg.

Then-Dr. Riikka Puurunen (now Prof.) and statue of Prof. Dmitry Mendeleev in the hall of St. Petersburg State University. Photo taken upon request by Prof. Victor Drozd. November 11, 2015. Originally published in http://aldhistory.blogspot.com/2015/11/travel-notes-st-petersburg-puurunen.html.

To the story.

ALD history and prof. emeritus Markus Pessa (updated)

TEK-lehti wrote on Jan 30, 2017 an excellent article about the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) at Tampere University of Technology (TUT), mentioning the very special Finnish researcher and inventor, prof. emeritus Markus Pessa who is also the founder and former leader of ORC. Pessa has also influenced the understanding of the history of atomic layer deposition (ALD) within the Virtual Project on the History of ALD (VPHA). The TEK-lehti article inspired me to write in the ALD History Blog also of Pessa's influence.

Many ALD researchers will recognise M. Pessa from early ALD publications. The first scientific article published in Finland on ALD in 1980 (Ahonen et al.) is co-authored by Pessa, and so is the review article in Journal of Applied Physics in 1986, which has been chosen to define the end year of VPHA. Both articles were featured and described in the recommended reading list of early ALD publications in the VPHA JVSTA focused review, http://dx.doi.org/10.1116/1.4971389 (open access).

Pessa has been further related to two puzzling questions which I have encountered during VPHA.  I believe that both questions have received decent answers.

1. When I started to work at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland in 2004, I soon learned from a colleague who had worked at TUT that there is (/was?) an old ALD reactor displayed labelled as "the world's first ALE reactor". When I first heard this, I admit that I was very surprised. How could this be true? ALE was invented in Espoo by Suntola, after all.    
2. I have - of course - been curious of when the Finnish and Soviet ALD scientists first met. When during the past few years I presented the question to several long-term scientists in Finland who were active already in 1990, I got always basically the same answer: the first meeting was at the ALE-1 conference in 1990 in Helsinki, where these researchers "just appeared". How come they "just appeared" there?!? How did they find their way to the conference?  

Copy of the cover of book of programme and abstracts, ALE-1 conference, Espoo/Helsinki, Finland, June 13-15, 1990. 

CU Boulder Today, ALD NanoSolutions, VPHA

CU Boulder Today published on Feb 7, 2017 a nice article describing the history of the company ALD NanoSolutions, a spin-off from the University of Colorado Boulder. ALD NanoSolutions is specialized in atomic layer deposition (ALD) for the coating of particles. Link to article: http://www.colorado.edu/today/2017/02/07/spinoff-company-all-cu-boulder-family.

Some quotes from the CU Boulder Today article:

• In 1997, Professor Alan Weimer of chemical and biological engineering heard a campus talk by Professor Steven George of chemistry about a novel process of coating surfaces with the thinnest of materials possible, known as atomic layer deposition (ALD).
• Within a few years Weimer and George had filed a number of patents on the technology, gaining exclusive rights to a wide range of intellectual property.
• “This company has executed with focus and pragmatism since we formed it, and now we are moving into high gear commercially,” says Weimer. “And we have what I call a lot of high-end ethics within the company, which is very important to all of us. That is one reason we are all still together after all these years.”

My first recollection of ALD NanoSolutions is from early 2000s, from the time I was a doctoral student at Helsinki University of Technology - nowadays Aalto University - in the Industrial Chemistry group of Prof. Outi Krause during 1999 to 2002. My research concerned particle ALD for catalyst applications. I started in 1998 as a diploma worker at Microchemistry Ltd. (nowadays part of ASM) in a research line which had been started many years earlier in Finland by Tuomo Suntola at Microchemistry Ltd. and the Finnish oil company Neste Oy (for more info, see the "Suntola story" in CVD 2014, details below). At HUT, we were of course curious of this new company: who is behind it, what is the technology, how will it commercialize ALD? 

Photo of Riikka after visiting ALD NanoSolutions March 18, 2014. (I cannot recall who took the photograph upon my request.  I will be to happy to add the name of the photographer here if the person who remembers to have taken the photo, will contact me.) 

Fast forward more than a decade. In 2014, I had a chance to travel to Boulder and visit Prof. Steven George and his group. At this moment, I worked as a Senior Scientist at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland.

Baltic ALD 2016 St. Petersburg invited speaker list

The invited speaker list of Baltic ALD 2016 in St. Petersburg has been updated and is as follows (titles of the talks at the conference website http://www.bald2016.ru/).

• Riikka L. Puurunen, VTT Research Centre of Finland Ltd, Espoo, Finland
• Erwin Kessels, Department of Applied Physics, Eindhoven University of Technology,
• Mikko Ritala, Department of Chemistry, University of Helsinki, Finland
• Tobias Törndahl, Solid State Electronics, Uppsala University, Sweden
• Emma Salmi, Beneq Oy, Finland
• Viktor Drozd, Saint Petersburg State University, Russia
• Viktor Luchinin, St Petersburg Electrotechnical University ”LETI”, Russia
• Andrey Markeev, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Russia

Screen capture from the conference website http://www.bald2016.ru/.

My invited talk---abstract here---is likely to be the last organizational presentation from VPHA.

Baltic ALD 2016 in St Petersburg, Oct 2-4

Just announced at http://www.bald2016.ru: "The first time the Baltic Conference on Atomic Layer Deposition (BALD) will be arranged in St. Petersburg (Russia) where Prof. V.B. Aleskovskii with his colleagues and assistants created the foundations of ALD in the 1950x. The aim of the Conference is to demonstrate recent developments in the areas of technology and applications of Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) and to show contribution of the Russian research centres to ALD applications. ..."

The conference will be organized October 2-4, 2016. Abstract submission deadline June 15th.

• My travel report from St Petersburg from November 2015 is the all-times most popular blog post of ALD History Blog. 
• Here is also link to my travel report from ALD Russia 2015 in Moscow-Dolgoprudny. At the end of this report, I wished that the international ALD community could once meet in St. Petersburg. Sometimes, dreams seem to come true!  

See you in St. Petersburg!

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

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

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.