The AVS Topical Conference on Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD 2013) is a three-day meeting (preceded by one day of tutorials), dedicated to the science and technology of atomic layer controlled deposition of thin films. Atomic layer deposition (ALD) is used to fabricate ultrathin and conformal thin film structures for many semiconductor and thin film device applications. A unique attribute of ALD is that it uses sequential self-limiting surface reactions to achieve control of film growth in the monolayer or sub-monolayer thickness regime. ALD is receiving attention for its potential applications from advanced electronics, microsystems, and displays to energy capture and storage, solid state lighting, biotechnology, security, and consumer products - particularly for any advanced technologies that require control of film structure in the nanometer or sub-nanometer scale.
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One technology that has benefited from the tremendous advantages of ALD is the transistor. As an example, the transition to high-k-metal gate would not have been possible without the adoption of ALD HfO2, TiN and TaN. Some of the early research in this area can be traced back to the many distinguished researchers involved with this conference throughout the years. As the semiconductor industry continues down the path of ever decreasing feature sizes, this trend is starting to proliferate throughout the entire fabrication of the microchip from frontend to backend applications. Moreover, the desire of consumers to increase mobility is driving the industry to create increasingly lower power, higher performance devices.
We are fortunate to have three distinguished speakers for this year's keynote session. Prof. Steve George from the University of Colorado at Boulder will give us an overview of taking an ALD process from research to commercialization. Prof. George is one of the pioneers of ALD and is world renowned for his work in the field. To give us a better perspective of the future trends in the semiconductor industry, we have invited Dr. Geoffrey Yeap from Qualcomm and Dr. James Clarke from Intel. Dr. Yeap is the Vice President of Technology at Qualcomm and responsible for silicon technology & foundry engineering and foundry IP/design enablement. He has more than 20 years of semiconductor experience with more than 30 patents and greater than 80 refereed journal and conference papers. Dr. Clarke is the manager of the metals and dielectrics group within Intel's Components Research Organization. His group's primary focus is on interconnect scaling. He has 12 years of experience with Intel and has co-authored more than 30 papers and has several patents.
A total of 334 abstracts were submitted for this year's conference, the largest number ever which continues the upward trend for this conference. In fact, compared to the last conference held in the U.S. (ALD 2011 in Boston), this is a 40% increase! Looking further into the abstract submissions, we can see the majority were contributed from the U.S. institutions, which is not surprising given the location. The next major locations of contributions were South Korea, Finland and Germany. We are also seeing an increase in submissions from China, an indication of the growth of ALD in one of the world's fastest growing economies. In addition, the diversity and reach of ALD can be seen in the abstracts submitted from the 22 different countries this year. We are proud and excited to see this continual growth of ALD.
Due to the large number of abstracts, we are implementing for the first time three parallel sessions on the Tuesday of the conference. We decided to test the effectiveness of the three parallel sessions at this year's conference in anticipation of continued future growth. Through numerous discussions with committee members, several ideas were proposed to accommodate the potential growth of this conference. These included extending the length of the conference to four days, to more stringent selection criteria for the abstracts. At the end, we felt the best way forward was to implement more parallel sessions. We understand this can lead to difficult choices in deciding which talks to attend. But since all talks are recorded and available post conference, we believe this approach would be the most effective. We welcome any comments and further suggestions on the multiple parallel sessions from all attendees.
Lastly, we would like to sincerely thank Della Miller and her team at AVS for their dedication and hard work in the organization of this conference. We would also like to express gratitude to all of our committee members, sponsors and exhibitors that have contributed to make this year's ALD conference a success. We hope the organization and structure of the conference will enable fruitful discussions and collaborations leading to an even brighter future for ALD.
Jiyoung Kim and Paul Ma, Conference Chairs, ALD 2013
