Key findings: ALD/Database continued to grow in 2020 by 323 new entries reaching 4527 entries in total. In 2020, we saw the introduction of: 123 new ALD processes, 20 new precursors, 17 new materials. Trending: most new ALD process go

Understanding plasma ALD – Why ions matter… and should be considered!
[Note: a recording of my presentation for the 2020 Coburn and Winters Student Award competition can be viewed at the bottom of this page] This year I had the honor of being a finalist in the AVS Coburn and Winters

The ALD/Database: looking back on the first year
Precursor naming schemes: what’s in a name? When submitting a new process we ask the contributors to describe the material and the reactants (including precursors). This also means that we are “forced” to use 1 coherent naming scheme for molecules.

Plasma ALD – A discussion of mechanisms – Commemorating the career of John Coburn
Undoubtedly, every scientist and technologist working in the field of plasma etching has heard about the research carried out by Coburn and Winters, two research scientists that worked at the IBM San Jose Research Laboratory for almost their full professional

What can Atomic Layer Deposition do for solar cells? – A few afterthoughts from my ALD conference tutorial
At the end of July the annual AVS International Conference on Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) – combined with the Atomic Layer Etching (ALE) Workshop – took place in Bellevue, Seattle. As customary, the Sunday before the conference itself was devoted to

#ALDALE2019: the aftermath… including photos!
The photos in this blog post were made by DIWAS Photography, Seattle Event Photographer Two weeks ago the 19th International Conference on Atomic Layer Deposition, featuring also the 6th International Atomic Layer Etching Workshop, took place in Bellevue, WA. As

Bridging academia and business – the heart of a successful collaboration in atomic scale processing
Fitting to the contents of this post on collaboration, this post will appear both on Atomic Limits and on the Oxford Instruments Plasma Technology blog. What defines a truly successful collaboration? It has to be something where the whole is

Topographically selective processing
– Taking selectivity up a notch by processing in the 3rd dimension
Recently, the art of processing materials in a selective manner has garnered significant attention. Especially in the past few years, the topic of making atomic scale processing techniques, such as atomic layer deposition (ALD) and atomic layer etching (ALE), 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

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