Next week in Grenoble, France we are hosting  a workshop on Atomic Scale Processing, organised with Minatec which I must say I am quite looking forward to. I think the subject is timely and in line with what many are expecting to be a trend in which current and novel processing technologies are combined to do “atomic scale processing”. Two techniques that immediately come to mind for those in the field are atomic layer deposition (ALD) and atomic layer etching (ALE or ALEt), but also many other techniques will remain part of the toolbox to do atomic scale processing, for instance plasma etching, ion beam etch and deposition and also other novel growth techniques such as those to make 2D materials, for example graphene and MoS₂. All of these will be discussed during the workshop.

I expect that the future will bring a lot of synergy between these techniques, and combinations might show unique new options for devices manufacturing. It gives me joy to be working for Plasma Technology, where all these technologies come together under one roof and I think there is a lot to be learned from the different techniques in order to advance all of them. We should always be careful not to try to reinvent the wheel and make use of all the knowledge that is available in all the other fields. For instance plasma etching and ion beam knowledge can be relevant for plasma ALD and ALE, and known effects in film growth by sputtering or Chemical Vapour Deposition (CVD) have value for understanding growth by ALD and 2D materials.

For my own contribution I will be talking about ALD and new developments for atomic scale processing. I plan to also discuss the basics of plasma ALD, which I think with going to smaller scales, gets more and more important. Other things I will be discussing include RF substrate biasing for ALD and plasma surface treatments. In general I am looking forward to an open discussion and exciting new ideas. The workshop is free, so if you are interested please sign up. Hope to see you there!

For more information visit: www.oxinst.com/ASP-workshop

For more information on our complete solution for Atomic Scale Processing visit: www.oxinst.com/ASP