Marc Merkx

I am an assistant professor in Applied Physics at Eindhoven University of Technology, where I work on thin film deposition for applications in nanoelectronics. I mostly focus on area-selective atomic layer deposition, atomic layer etching, and on the study of the underlying reaction mechanisms.

Unravelling complex nanoelectronic devices
A challenge-based learning assignment – part I: the teacher perspective

With the new academic year just started, this blogpost focuses on teaching, and describes the assignment we designed as part of a course on plasma processing. The inspiration for this assignment is that we all are accustomed to the marvels of modern smartphone communication and advanced computing technology, but most people are not aware of … Read more

Control of the ion energy during plasma-based atomic-scale processing – animation and publication on tailored waveform biasing

This post is about the value of industry-academia partnerships, and about how such collaborations can trigger new innovations. This month exactly 3 years ago, we were approached by Prodrive Technologies, a company in the Eindhoven area developing and manufacturing electronics and mechatronics, to talk about the possibilities for developing a power supply for the plasma … Read more

Fully self-aligned vias: the killer application for area-selective ALD? – A discussion of the requirements for implementation in high volume manufacturing

Please cite as: A.J.M. Mackus, M.J.M. Merkx. Fully Self-Aligned Vias: The Killer Application for Area-Selective ALD? – A Discussion of the Requirements for Implementation in High Volume Manufacturing. 2019, 7. AtomicLimits. Recently, the 4th Area Selective Deposition workshop (ASD2019) took place at IMEC in Leuven, Belgium. During this workshop it became clear that the main … Read more

Towards Area-Selective Atomic Layer Deposition with High Selectivity
– Our perspective on area-selective ALD

We just published a perspective article entitled “From the bottom-up: towards area-selective atomic layer deposition with high selectivity”.1 This perspective describes the current status of the field of area-selective atomic layer deposition (ALD), and also includes my vision on how we can improve the selectivity. It is published in Chemistry of Materials as part of … Read more

Stop motion movie of a novel area-selective ALD approach
– Building a film with nanoblocks – literally!

As will be clear from many of our posts on this blog(1, 2, 3), area-selective deposition (ASD) is currently an extremely hot research topic. This is mainly because of its potential application in future nanoelectronics as a solution to the challenge of aligning features at the nanoscale. After our work on direct-write ALD of Pt … Read more

New developments in area selective deposition
– Take-home messages from the 2nd Area Selective Deposition workshop (ASD2017)

As announced in our previous blog post on the 2nd area selective deposition (ASD2017) workshop, this post will highlight the new developments in the field of ASD. I will summarize my take-home messages from the workshop by discussing three topics that were addressed in several presentations: New categories of area selective deposition (ASD) The improvement … Read more

2nd Area-selective deposition workshop (ASD 2017)
– Flashback

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On April 20-21, the 2nd Area Selective Deposition workshop (ASD 2017) took place in Eindhoven.  Here we give a brief flashback of the workshop and include several photographs of the meeting, including a group photo of the participants. The workshop started on Thursday evening with a welcome reception. This reception took place on the campus … Read more

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