#ALDALE2019 – A preview of my “ALD Innovator Award” plenary presentation at the 19th International Conference on Atomic Layer Deposition

The 19^th International Conference on Atomic Layer Deposition, featuring also the 6^th International Atomic Layer Etching Workshop, is about to start. It will kick-off today (Sunday July 22) with a tutorial session and the welcome reception. I feel extremely honored as I have been awarded the ALD Innovator Award this year. I highly appreciate this recognition of our work over the years which has been a real team effort of course. I’m very grateful for all the good and hard work done by my students and postdocs over the years we have been working on ALD (for me it started with the 2nd ALD conference in Seoul in 2002) as well as the other principal investigators, technical and support staff of the Plasma & Materials Processing group at the Eindhoven University of Technology. For me it is hard to express in words how happy I am with what this team has achieved. I also want to say a big thank you for all those people outside the research group with whom I have collaborated and/or pleasantly interacted. It all has helped me to accomplish several goals I’ve been dreaming of. Thank you so much!

But now about the plenary presentation I will be given on Monday morning to kick off the first day of the technical program. I have chosen “Atomic Scale Processing: from Understanding to Innovation” as a title. With this title I want to indicate that I will not only be talking about ALD. I will also cover atomic layer etching (ALE) and reach out to my ALE friends in audience (see some figures about ALD and ALE below). Furthermore, I want to point out (again!) that we are at the dawn of the atomic scale processing (see my earlier post about that) which goes much further than only ALD. Personally I think that both ALD and ALE will be two key technologies – among probably many more – that will be extremely important for the manufacturing of future devices. Think of the Internet-of-Things, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, etc. This is also why the research scope of our Plasma & Materials Processing group is shifting beyond only ALD, even beyond only ALD and ALE. The research scope is shifting to “Atomic Scale Processing”.

Schematic illustration of the atomic layer-by-atomic layer growth and atomic layer-by-atomic layer etch as achieved by ALD and ALE, respectively.

Schematic representation of one complete, generalized cycle of (a) atomic layer etching (ALE) and (b) atomic layer deposition (ALD). In (c), the so-called saturation curves for the various steps in the ALE and ALD processes are schematically illustrated (after Fig. 3 in the publication by Faraz et al., ECS J. Solid State Sci. and Technol., 4 (6) N5023 (2015))

Schematic illustration of the key features for (a) atomic layer etching (ALE) and (b) atomic layer deposition (ALD). Note the similarities and differences between ALD and ALE (after Fig. 4 in the publication by Faraz et al., ECS J. Solid State Sci. and Technol., 4 (6) N5023 (2015))

With the subtitle I try to indicate that I like to contribute to innovation and to do research which has finally real impact. In all modesty, I think I can say that we have contributed to quite some technical innovations in our field. These range from new and improved plasma ALD tools to new applications of ALD such as, for example, silicon solar cells. However, for all the innovations we have contributed to, it was important or otherwise extremely helpful to have a very good understanding of what is happening during ALD film growth on the atomic level etc.

During my presentation, I will cover several topics that I think are worth it spending a few minutes on each. They concern topics that have kept me busy over the recent years. As a matter of fact, they are still keeping me busy a lot. I will list these topics below and they can be considered a kind of main messages that I want people to take away from my presentation. I’m planning to elaborate on each of these “messages” later in separate blog posts.

Topics to be discussed during my plenary presentation and main messages to take away:

1. 1. 1. ALD status report: strong, healthy & growing
      2. ALD is big in photovoltaics
      3. Plasma ALD has become mainstream
      4. Plasma ALD can be very conformal
      5. Ion bombardment yields opportunities for ALD
      6. Area-selective deposition is trending
      7. ALD fundamentals: need for quantitative data
      8. Atomic layer etching is becoming vital

Finally I want to point out that we will be having many more presentations given by members from our group. Below is a list. I hope to see you at #ALDALE2019, let’s chat and hang out! And please enjoy the conference!