Please cite as M.J.M. Merkx, A.J.M. Mackus, Area-selective ALD of diffusion barriers for via optimization – There is plenty of room at the bottom. 2022, 7. AtomicLimits. This week the 6th area-selective deposition (ASD) workshop will be held in San Francisco, California. During this workshop, we will present our latest work on area-selective ALD of TaN.1 … Read more
In 2021 it was 10 years ago that I took over the chair position of the Plasma & Materials Processing (PMP) group at the Department of Applied Physics of the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). Since then I have been leading this research group and I thought that it was a good time now to … Read more
How a master course can provide insights into real-life industrial challenges In the previous blog on the master course “plasma processing science and technology” given at the Eindhoven University of Technology, a nice and concise explanation about the goal and structure of this master course has been shared. The blog described how this relatively “new … Read more
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
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 beyond AB-style processes, e.g. for ternary materials. Catch-up effect seen in first year (2019) subsided, … Read more
[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 Student Award competition, for my research on fundamental aspects of plasma-assisted atomic layer deposition (plasma … Read more
Introduction In March 2019 the ALD/Database was introduced to the ALD community on www.atomiclimits.com. The ALD/Database is an initiative by Harm Knoops, Bart Macco, Vincent Vandalon and Erwin Kessels and offers a centralized platform for the ALD community to provide an overview of papers reporting on ALD processes and their characteristics. New papers can be … Read more
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 career. In 2016 Harold Winters, at the age of 83, sadly passed away and this … Read more
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 tutorials, each about 45 minutes long. In previous years the focus was mainly on fundamentals … Read more
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 always, it was a very intense conference with an extremely full program packed in 3.5 … Read more