As you might have noticed, we have just started a year in which we celebrate the discovery of the Periodic System by Dmitri Mendeleev: 2019 is the 150th anniversary of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements and has therefore been
Where do our students and postdocs go? Mainly to ASML?
– About the alumni of the Plasma & Materials Processing research group
When evaluating what comes out of a university research group, often the research carried out by the group is given most attention. However, obviously, the most important product of a research group is not the research itself but it’s the
In situ Studies of ALD Processes & Reaction Mechanisms
It is the time of the year that the annual AVS International Conference on Atomic Layer Deposition combined with the International Atomic Layer Etching Workshop takes place. The location of 18th edition of the ALD conference (ALD 2018) and the
The prospects for the use of Al2O3 in solar cells (in 10 questions)
– How we looked at it in 2011
At the end of last month – in May – the 2018 edition of the “PERC Solar Cell Technology” report appeared as published by Taiyang news. It is the third edition of this interesting report and it starts by stating
Plasma ALD and substrate biasing
– The impact of energetic ions on film properties
“Plasma ions create electronic defects in sensitive substrates as well as generate a large electronic trap density in deposited films, especially detrimental for gate dielectric applications.” This is a sentence that I read about 10 years ago (in January 2007
Surface science aspects of (plasma) ALD reactions
– Extending the legacy of Harold Winters
The fact that Dr. Harold Winters passed away last year – at the age of 83 – has led to initiatives in tribute of Harold and his profound contributions to plasma science. One of these initiatives is a Special Issue
In situ spectroscopic ellipsometry and ALD
– How ellipsometry became a popular technique to monitor ALD film growth
Serendipity is often cited as a key factor in scientific innovations. I can fully confirm this as will also be obvious from the subtitle of this blog site: “Blog about strategy, serendipity and vision in nanoscience”. From my point of
The dawn of atomic-scale processing
– The growing importance of atomic layer deposition and etching
A few weeks ago, the big news was that the research alliance of IBM, Global Foundries and Samsung unveiled the world’s first 5 nm chip as we could all read everywhere over the internet [1]. Most notable was however the
2nd Area-selective deposition workshop (ASD 2017)
– Flashback
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
ALD-enabled nanopatterning: area-selective ALD by area-activation
– Reflecting on ASD 2016 with the ASD 2017 workshop approaching
The 2nd Area Selective Deposition workshop (ASD 2017, link) is approaching quickly now. The workshop will take place in Eindhoven on April 21 and my colleague Adrie Mackus is the main organizer. With the upcoming workshop in mind, I thought