Introduction and invitation to participate

Virtual Project on the History of ALD

VPHA, vph-ald.com: Worldwide collaborative effort, in an atmosphere of openness, respect and trust

Introduction published originally in aldpulse.com and Google docs

Update published originally in Google docs

 

Virtual project on the history of ALD: update and invitation to participate

Atomic layer deposition (ALD) has become a technique that, for its part, changes the world we live in. As for any significant technology, it is interesting and important to know where the technique came from. How was the concept developed? What were the first ALD experiments? When, where and by whom were they made? Why were they made?

In July 2013, a volunteer-based effort called Virtual Project on the History of ALD (VPHA) was created, aimed to answer these and other questions related to early days of ALD. The original Introduction and Invitation to participate, dated July 25, 2013, can be found below. VPHA was first announced at AVS-ALD 2013 San Diego, USA and thereafter at several international thin film deposition conferences.

 

The core activity of VPHA is to list and read early ALD publications, and collect together personal summaries of ALD scientists of the contents of the individual publications. The work progresses in the “ALD history evolving file” in this link (it is a Google docs file), which can be viewed and commented upon in real time by anyone. To allow all important details to become visible and to keep up the good spirit in VPHA, we continue to call for an atmosphere of openness, respect, and trust.

 

During first two years, VPHA has already booked significant advances, as described in the VPHA Publication Plan. The first joint poster presentation on the general history of ALD was made at Baltic ALD 2014 Helsinki, Finland. Another general poster and one specifically discussing Molecular Layering (name given for ALD in USSR) were presented at ALD 2014 in Kyoto, Japan. In Kyoto, also an ALD history tutorial was also given. To celebrate the forty-year anniversary of ALD in Finland (or Atomic Layer Epitaxy, as the technique was called), an exhibition on “photos, stories” was created for Baltic ALD 2014, with a related essay published in Chem. Vap. Deposition. A dedicated website http://vph-ald.com was created in fall 2014 to help the VPHA collaboration, and organizational presentations were made in fall 2015 (ALD Russia in Dolgoprudny-Moscow, Russia; Baltic ALD, Tartu, Estonia). All VPHA publications are shared freely in the internet for everyone’s access.

 

VPHA has already achieved a lot; nevertheless, the work is far from being completed. As of October 14, 2015, the number of ALD publications listed for up to year 1986 totals 347. About 350 short personal summaries have been written by 38 voluntary co-authors from 11 different countries and over 20 different institutions. To have each publication read and commented by at least three people, approximately 700 short personal views are still needed.

 

With this Update and Invitation to participate, we want to invite more voluntary people to join VPHA, to help us complete this important work. Everyone having interest in ALD is welcome to join and contribute. The more we are in number and the more varied we are in our backgrounds, the better. The only requirement for participation is that you have some prior understanding of what ALD is, and what it is not.

 

A person considering to volunteer to the VPHA reading will have the question: how to best get started? The following list shares some important practical information regarding the VPHA.

  • The central VPHA information hub is the dedicated webpage http://vph-ald.com.
  • A separate LinkedIn ALD History group has been created to help the VPHA collaboration. The group is open for anyone to join and joining is recommended. However, one can contribute to VPHA without being a member of this LinkedIn group.
  • Detailed information on the latest progress of VPHA is sent through occasional email updates to the VPHA co-authors and prospective co-authors. To receive the periodic VPHA email updates, please send a request by email to info@vph-ald.com (this email is currently automatically forwarded to the attention of Riikka Puurunen, Yury Koshtyal, Henrik Pedersen, Jonas Sundqvist).
  • The VPHA work-in-progress- files can all be accessed through http://vph-ald.com/VPHAopenfiles.html. To start contributing, please have a look at VPHA-reading-workflow first, and then continue to the VPHA-reading-overview-file to choose papers that need reading. After reading, to add your comment, please proceed to the core of VPHA, ALD-history-evolving-file. The ALD-history-evolving-file contains first the this update; then the original Introduction and Invitation to participate, thereafter instructions on adding comments, and after that, the publication info followed by individual comments.
  • Public discussion on VPHA can be followed on Twitter (#VPHA & #ALDep). The BALDengineering blog also publishes VPHA related updates, and aldpulse.com has published VPHA’s announcements. VPHA-related materials can also be found e.g. in Mendeley and Research Gate.

 

The current plan for the VPHA timing is that the reading will be active during the last months of 2015. In Jan-Feb 2016 we will prepare for the final VPHA presentation, to be made for the ALD 2016 conference in Dublin, Ireland. We will also complete the other remaining items of the VPHA Publication Plan, namely the optional review article and the Wikipedia update. The plan is to formally end VPHA at the Dublin ALD 2016 conference.

 

October 25, 2015

 

Riikka Puurunen (Dr., Senior Scientist), VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland

Yury Koshtyal (Dr., Research Fellow), Ioffe Physical Technical Institute, St. Petersburg, Russia

Henrik Pedersen (Assoc. Prof.), Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden

J. Ruud Van Ommen (Assoc. Prof.), Delft University of Technology, Delft, the Netherlands;

Jonas Sundqvist (Dr., Senior Scientist), Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany; Lund University, Lund, Sweden

 

--- original Introduction and Invitation to participate, from July 2013 ---

 

Virtual project on the history of ALD: Introduction and invitation to participate

 

Atomic layer deposition (ALD) has become a technique that, for its part, changes the world we live in. As for any significant technology, it is interesting and important to know where the technique came from. How was the concept developed? What were the first ALD experiments? When, where and by whom were they made? Why were they made?

 

Currently, the answers to those questions depend on whom you ask. Some say that ALD started from Dr. T. Suntola’s invention and patent application on “Atomic Layer Epitaxy” in 1974 in Finland. Others say that ALD was practiced already in the 1960’s in the Soviet Union as “Molecular Layering” by Prof. V.B. Aleskovskii and Prof. S.I. Kol’tsov. Exactly when ALD was made in the USSR for the first time is also not completely clear: one review article describes how ALD was presented in conference proceedings from the year 1965, published in 1967; while wikipedia states that the principle of ALD was published in the early 1960’s and the ALD concept proposed in 1952. Some have claimed that Irving Langmuir had already demonstrated ALD, still decades earlier.

 

To generate a common view on the early evolution of ALD, a “virtual project” is being set up as a collaborative effort by the whole ALD community. To allow all important details to become visible and to keep up the good spirit, we call for an atmosphere of openness, respect, and trust.

 

To realize this “virtual project,” the plan is as follows:

First, we should generate a complete list of early ALD publications.

Second, interested individuals should pick up some of the early publications, read them, and comment on the work. For example: was ALD made (i.e., do you recognize the work as ALD), and if yes, which process it was; and other noteworthy things.

Third, the individual should share their comments with others, and the comments of different people should be collected together.

 

When such Comments by a sufficiently large number of people are collected together, the collection should highlight what were the most important turning points in the evolution of ALD---and probably also visualize the different viewpoints people may have.

 

How will the results be published? We will let this work evolve and see what it becomes, and decide the means of publication later. The names of all persons who have kindly helped in this virtual project will be announced. In addition to a publication, the goal is to update the wikipedia page.

 

To make this “virtual project” succeed, we need help. Everyone who is interested in the history of ALD is called to participate in this important and unique effort. Whether you are from Europe, America, Asia, Australia, or elsewhere, you are welcome to contribute---the more we are in number and the more varied we are in our backgrounds, the better, because different people with different backgrounds will interpret the same facts in different ways. The only requirement for participation is that you have some prior understanding of what ALD is (and what it is not).

 

Interested in participating in this unique world-wide effort? We warmly welcome you on board! Please open this link (it is a Google docs file), read through the instructions of how to participate---and start contributing whenever it suits you! We plan to keep the file open for editing until the end of year 2013.

 

July 25, 2013,

 

Riikka Puurunen (Dr.), Senior Scientist, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland

Aziz Abdulagatov (Dr.), Postdoctoral Fellow, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), USA

Jonas Sundqvist (Dr.), Group Leader High-k Devices, Fraunhofer IPMS-CNT, Germany

Annina Titoff, Editor in Chief www.aldpulse.com

 

 

 

 

contact: ALD History group in LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/groups/ALD-History-5072051/about