The AVS Topical Conference on Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD 2012) will be 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 applicati ons. 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.

Audio recordings (with the synchronized PowerPoint presentation) are available in this portal.

• AVS Members may access all content in this portal complimentary as part of your membership benefits package. To access the content, please sign in here using your AVS membership e-mail and password. You may also login via MyAVS at www.avs.org.
• Nonmembers who are interested in access to this content are encouraged to consider AVS Membership. To review AVS benefits and to join click here.

Welcome to the 12th annual conference on atomic layer deposition in Dresden, which was held as joint meeting with the Baltic ALD 2012. During the past years, the ALD technique as well as the community has seen a continuing increase in attraction, showing that ALD moved from a niche application to a mature and well accepted technology. This increase was remarkable, particularly in the past few years. It became necessary to introduce parallel sessions and the chairs often suffered from lack of space in the conference rooms, making in necessary to improvise. It almost became habit that the number of submitted contributions and participants are topping the numbers of previous years.

Despite some further conferences taking place in parallel, this year's submission count and the number of registered participants again resulted in unexpectedly high numbers. With more than 320 submitted abstracts from all around the world, ALD has obviously moved from a barely known technology to an essential tool of many laboratories worldwide.

An important point which many colleagues enjoy while talking about ALD conferences is multidisciplinarity. The past conferences have shown many shifts in the main focus, but one fact is common with all of them: Once in a year, ALD brings together scientists and engineers through the whole spectrum from fundamental research to applied research, and further to industrial development. Unlike other meetings with similar mixture of interests, the ALD conferences have maintained a common language and a very hearty atmosphere. With this in mind, we kept as good as possible the widespread coverage of topical interests and hope that it will be to your satisfaction.

The future of the ALD community relies on young researchers and students. For this reason, also this year awards will be issued. One award will be issued for the best poster presentation, sponsored by Oxford instruments, and another award for the best student paper, sponsored by Novellus Systems Inc. Besides, a senior scientist will be awarded by the AVS for his/her significant research on/with ALD. In this way, the ALD community aims to say “thank you” to the awardees and encourage their further effort.

The conference is for the first time held in Germany and the beautiful city of Dresden was considered as the best possible place. Besides being the focal point of German ALD research activities, Dresden offers much more: Being a city of great historical importance in this part of Europe, it offers a great number of attractions, partly original, and partly restored after severe destruction, but with great fidelity.

Uwe Schröder & Mato Knez, Conference Chairs, ALD & Baltic ALD 2012