ALD 2020 Innovator Awardee
The ALD Innovator award “For Original Work and Leadership in ALD” will be presented during the live virtual session on Monday.
Mikko Ritala
University of Helsinki, Finland
Biography: Mikko Ritala (born 1968 in Nokia, Finland) is a professor of inorganic materials chemistry at University of Helsinki. He received his M.Sc. degree in 1991 from University of Turku, and Ph.D. degree in 1994 from University of Helsinki, both in inorganic chemistry. During 1995 – 2003 he worked at University of Helsinki, first as a postdoctoral researcher and then as an academy research fellow, both posts granted by Academy of Finland. In 2003 he was nominated to his current position.
After starting in 1991, Mikko Ritala has spent nearly 30 years in ALD research. His main research topic in ALD is development of new processes and precursors for thin films for microelectronics and other applications. Real time reaction mechanism studies form an important part of this research. Another research area is preparation of nanostructured materials by for example templating with ALD and electrodeposition, and electrospinning and electroblowing of nanofibres. Mikko Ritala has supervised 30 PhDs, published 500 papers (h-index = 70) and holds several key patents. In 2007 he was nominated as ISI Highly Cited Author in the field of materials science, and in 2010 he received Alfred Kordelin Foundation award. He has given numerous invited talks in international conferences. He started the American Vacuum Society’s short course on Atomic Layer Deposition and has given tutorials on the same topic also in other occasions. Mikko Ritala has participated in organization of numerous international conferences, including the AVS ALD conference series from its very beginning. He chaired the ALD 2004 meeting in Helsinki that combined the AVS-ALD and Baltic ALD (BALD) conferences, and he is prepared to repeat the same in 2024.