Meet the Instructors
Gary S. Ash is President of Castle Brook Corporation, Dartmouth, MA. The company provides technical and management consulting services for the vacuum and cryogenics industry. He has had more than 35 years of experience in vacuum systems, pumps and other components, deposition processes ranging from evaporation to sputtering to molecular beam epitaxy. Engineering experience includes equipment and process design, manufacturing process development, materials and failure analysis, and applications support. In addition, he has had extensive experience in product strategy, development, and manufacturing planning for industrial products and services. He was previously employed by the CTI-Cryogenics division of Helix Technology Corporation, ASTeX, RIBER division of Instruments SA, Optical Coating Laboratory Inc., Spectrum Systems division of Barnes Engineering Co., AAI Corporation, and American Electronic Laboratories. He holds BS and MS degrees in electrical engineering from Cornell University and a PhD in optical physics from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland.
Hana Baránková is an Associate Professor at the Angstrom Laboratory, Uppsala University and Director of the interdisciplinary program on environmental applications of plasma. Her primary interests are innovation in coating technology, development of plasma sources, plasma processing and plasma treatment of surfaces and gases. She has published over 70 scientific papers and holds several industrial patents on plasma systems. She is an inventor of metastable assisted deposition and co-inventor of the Linear Arc Discharge (LAD) source, the Magnets-in-Motion concept in plasma sources and Fused Hollow Cathode and Hybrid Hollow Electrode Activated Discharge (H-HEAD) cold atmospheric plasma sources. Hana Baránková is currently serving on the SVC Board of Directors, is Director of TACs, TAC chair for Emerging Technologies and member of the Education, International Relations, Scholarship, and Student Sponsorship Committees. She acts as a consultant and is a co-founder of two companies, BB Plasma HB and BB Plasma Design AB.
Ladislav Bárdos is an Associate Professor at Uppsala University in Sweden and Research leader of the Plasma group at Angstrom laboratory. He received his PhD in 1978 from the Czech Acad. Sci. and a Doctor of Science degree from Charles University in Prague in 1995. In 1984 he was awarded the Czechoslovak State Prize for outstanding research results in the plasma deposition of thin films. He has more than 25 years of experience in the field of applied plasma physics and thin films. He has published over 100 scientific papers, designed several plasma sources for industry and has 15 Czech, 7 Swedish and several international patents. He runs a consulting company in plasma sources and processing technology. His primary interests are microwave plasmas, including downstream ECR and surface-wave generation, and particularly the radio frequency generated hollow cathodes and hybrid sources at both low and atmospheric pressures. Lad Bardos is TAC chair of a special session Heuréka at the SVC TechCon and a member of the SVC Publications Committee.
Abe Belkind has15 years of research and development experience in industry and more than 20 years in academia. From 1981 to 1996 he was a Lead Scientist for BOC Coating Technology, where he investigated and developed vacuum and plasma technologies for the deposition of thin film coatings. In 1996, he became an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Chemical, Biochemical and Materials Engineering at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ. In 1997, he created a consulting company, Abe Belkind & Associates, Inc. He is an expert in various technologies for depositing and designing metal alloy, oxide, carbide, nitride and other thin films; plasma surface cleaning and treatment; and methods of film analysis. He has received 10 patents, published a book, and written more than 100 technical papers. Dr. Belkind is the recipient of a BOC Group Technology award and two awards from the Latvian Academy of Science.
Klaus Bewilogua studied physics at the Technical University in Dresden, Germany, and completed his thesis in 1973. In the following time he was research assistant at the Technical University in Chemnitz, Germany, where he worked on structure analyses of amorphous materials and on the plasma assisted deposition of hard coatings. 1983 he qualified for lecturer. In 1990 Klaus Bewilogua joined the Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films in Braunschweig, Germany. As head of a department he is responsible for R&D in the field of hard coatings, especially diamond-like carbon and cubic boron nitride.
Clark Bright is a Senior Staff Scientist and Group Technical Leader with 3M Corporation. He is directing the development and scale-up of processes for vacuum deposition of multilayer organic and inorganic thin film products. He previously was Vice President at Presstek, Inc., and its Delta V Technology subsidiary, where he directed the R&D of transparent conductive oxides, barrier coatings, polymer multilayer (PML) technology, and custom vacuum coating equipment. While at Southwall Technologies, as Director of Product Development he led the development of a web coating process for sputter depositing a durable, conductive (ITO), multilayer antireflection coating on plastic film used on CRT computer monitors. He has published and presented numerous papers on optical coatings and holds 11 patents in the field.
Greg Caskey started as an experimental nuclear physicist, then turned to thin film deposition and product development through various R&D efforts in mirror, electrochromic film, optical filter, and transparent conductive oxide coatings. He is currently a co-owner of LVR, a specialized machine vision company for high end imaging based 2D and 3D inspection methods and inspection equipment for pattern, color, image distortion and other feature conformance as well as robotic automation. He also provides consulting services in some areas of thin film R&D and evaluation. He has published over 25 papers in professional and technical journals and has several patents and one R&D 100 award.
Tom Christensen is a Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. He received his B.S. in physics from the University of Minnesota in 1979 and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Applied Physics from Cornell University. After several years as a member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque he joined the University of Colorado faculty in 1989. He has worked with vacuum technology, thin film technology and surface characterization since 1980 and has taught local AVS short courses since 1992.
J.A. (George) Dobrowolski is currently a guest worker at the National Research Council of Canada. His main interests are optical filters, in general, and the development of theoretical methods for the design and construction of optical multilayer systems, in particular. He also is interested in the development of various new technological and consumer-oriented applications of optical coatings. He is the author or co-author of about 150 publications, eight handbook articles, and 28 patents in the field of optical thin films. He received the 1987 Joseph Fraunhofer Award, the 1996 David Richardson Medal of the Optical Society of America, and the 1997 Medal of Achievement in Industrial and Applied Physics of the Canadian Association of Physicists. Dobrowolski is the co-inventor of the optical thin film security devices used on all Canadian bank notes of $20 and higher denominations.
Arutiun Ehiasarian joined the Nanotechnology Centre for PVD Research at Sheffield Hallam University, UK in 1998 where he obtained his PhD in Plasma Science and Surface Engineering. His research within NTCPVD has concentrated on development of plasma PVD technologies for substrate pretreatment prior to coating deposition to improve adhesion, deposition of coatings with dense microstructure, low-pressure plasma nitriding and hybrid processes of plasma nitriding/coating deposition. He has experience with cathodic vacuum arc discharges, dc and pulsed magnetron discharges, and radio-frequency coil enhanced magnetron sputtering. He utilises plasma diagnostics such as optical emission spectroscopy (OES), electrostatic probes, energy-resolved mass spectroscopy and atomic absorption spectroscopy. Materials characterisation includes high-resolution TEM, STEM, STEM-EDS, SEM, and XRD as well as mechanical testing available at NTCPVD. Arutiun is one of the pioneers of high power impulse magnetron sputtering (HIPIMS) technology and his work in the field has been acknowledged with the R.F. Bunshah Award (2002) and the TecVac Prize (2002). He is an author of more than 30 publications, 10 invited lectures and 3 patents in the field of PVD and HIPIMS.
John T. Felts is an internationally recognized expert in the area of transparent barrier materials for packaging, high-rate plasma deposition, and thin film technologies. He holds five U.S. patents in the thin film area; has published and spoken internationally; and invented, developed, and commercially demonstrated the first large-scale plasma deposited SiOx coating and equipment. Today, he is the founder and President/CEO of Nano Scale Surface Systems, Inc.
David Glocker is President of Isoflux Incorporated, a manufacturer of magnetron equipment, which he founded in 1993. He has more than 20 years’ experience in thin film research, development, and manufacturing and has taken a number of new processes from laboratory-scale feasibility studies through successful production. He is an inventor or co-inventor of 25 U.S. patents and an author of more than 25 research papers in the areas of sputter source design, plasmas and plasma characteristics, sources of substrate heating in sputtering, and the control of sputtering processes and sputtered film properties. He also is the co-editor of The Handbook of Thin Film Process Technology, a major reference work in the field.
Jeremy M. Grace is currently a senior principal scientist at the Eastman Kodak company. At Kodak, he has worked in the areas of plasma surface modification, thin-film adhesion, sputter deposition, and organic vapor deposition. He has written several patents and journal articles in the area of plasma modification of polymers. He is a member of the American Vacuum Society and served as chair of the Upstate New York Chapter (UNY-VAC) from 1998 - 2000.
Joseph E. Greene is the D.B. Willett Professor of Materials Science and Physics Director of the Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois. The focus of his research has been the development of an atomic-level understanding of adatom/surface interactions during vapor-phase film growth in order to controllably manipulate microchemistry, microstructure, and physical properties. His work has involved film growth by all forms of sputter deposition (MBE, CVD, MOCVD, and ALE). He was President of the American Vacuum Society in 1989, a consultant for several research and development laboratories, and a visiting professor at several universities. Recent awards include receipt of the Aristotle Award from SRC (1998), the Adler Award from the American Physical Society (1998), Fellow of the American Vacuum Society (1993) and the American Physical Society (1998), and the Turnbull Prize from the Materials Research Society (1999). He was elected to the US National Academy of Engineering in 2003. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Thin Solid Films.
James N. Hilfiker graduated from the Electrical Engineering Department of the University of Nebraska in 1995. His graduate research involved in situ ellipsometry and optical characterization of magneto-optic thin films. He joined the J.A. Woollam Company upon graduation and has worked in their applications lab for over 11 years. He has authored over 30 technical articles involving Ellipsometry, including a couple of Encylopedia chapters and a recent book chapter on Vacuum Ultraviolet Ellipsometry.
Norbert Kaiser received his Diplom Physiker in 1974, his Dr. Rer. Nat. in 1983 and his Dr. Habil in 1999 from the University of Jena. After nine years of research on nucleation and growth of thin films, he joined the Optical Thin Film Group of the Physikalisch Technisches Institut, in Jena, and was responsible for R&D on coatings for the UV. Since 1992 he has headed the Optical Thin Film Department and is Deputy Director of the Fraunhofer Institute Applied Optic and Precision Engineering in Jena. He has authored a large number of papers and patents on optical films for short wavelength, and he is editor of Optical Interference Coatings in the Springer Series in Optical Sciences.
Eric Kay spent 35 years with the IBM Research Division in San Jose, CA, heading up the Surface, Thin Film, and Plasma Science Groups. From 1991 to 1998 he was on the Stanford University Faculty in the Material Science and Engineering Department. His personal research throughout his career has been intimately involved with all aspects of plasma science in the context of thin film science and technology. He is the author of 7 book chapters, 160 technical papers, and 12 patents. He is a Fellow of the APS and AVS and was the first recipient of the John Thornton Memorial AVS Award as well as the recipient of US Senior Scientist von Humboldt Award. He is presently the Editor of —Critical Reviews- JVST.
Robert A. Langley is retired from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories. He has performed research in the fields of atomic and molecular physics, solid state physics, material science, vacuum science, upper atmospheric phenomena, fusion power, and high-energy accelerators. He has also worked at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria. He continues to publish scientific articles and has published over 130 scientific papers.
Peter Martin - Dr. Martin has worked at Battelle, Pacific Northwest Laboratory (BNW) for the past twenty eight years where he currently holds the position of Laboratory Fellow, and specializes in developing thin film coatings for energy, biomedical, space and defense applications. He pioneered the use of reactive magnetron sputtering technology to fabricate novel coatings, superlattice and quantum well materials and engineered coatings with improved durability, adhesion, and performance. He also specializes in large-area coating development. He is currently President of the Society of Vacuum Coaters, Secretary for the AVS Advanced Surface Engineering Division Executive Committee, and Technical Advisory Committee member for the Society of Vacuum Coaters. He was elected a Mentor of SVC in 2003. He has written over 200 technical publications, given over 200 technical presentations, won three R&D 100 Awards for his work in microfabrication and barrier coatings for flat panel displays, two FLC awards, Battelle Technology of the Year, 2003, for his work with the photolytic artificial lung, distinguished inventor, and PNNL 2005 Inventor of the Year. He has twenty four patents and numerous pending patents in microtechnology, coatings technology, thermoelectrics and barrier coating areas.
H. Angus Macleod has more than 40 years of experience in optical coatings, both in manufacturing and in research. He was born and educated in Glasgow, Scotland, and worked both in industry and academia in Great Britain before joining the University of Arizona as Professor of Optical Sciences in 1979. Since 1995, he has been full time with the Thin Film Center, Inc., a software, training and consulting company in Tucson, AZ, that he co-founded in 1986. He is the author of Thin Film Optical Filters, 3rd edition (IoP Publishing, 2001).
Allan Matthews is Professor of Surface Engineering, in the Department of Engineering Materials at the University of Sheffield, UK. Prior to this appointment he was Director of the Research Centre in Surface Engineering at the University of Hull, UK. He has been working on plasma-assisted PVD processes for about 25 years. He spent his early career in the aerospace industry and subsequently carried out research into enhanced plasma-based coating and treatment processes as well as test and evaluation methods. He holds eight patents in these fields and has authored or co-authored over 250 publications, including the book, Coatings Tribology (Elsevier, 1994). He is a former Chair of the Executive Committee of the Advanced Surface Engineering Division of the AVS and has been a Symposium Committee member and a Proceedings Editor for the ICMCTF Conference over a number of years. He is Chair of the British Vacuum Council and a Co-Editor of the Elsevier journal, Surface and Coatings Technology.
Donald J. McClure is President of Acuity Consulting and Training and recently retired from 3M’s Corporate Research Laboratory, where he spent twenty five years working on a broad range of products and projects that utilized vacuum roll coating and processing. Don served the Society of Vacuum Coaters in many roles including President and Secretary. He has offered his courses on the “Basics of Vacuum Web Coating” and “Sputter Deposition onto Flexible Substrates” for many years. His presentation, “A Wizard’s Guide to Vacuum and Vacuum Coating,” has received rave reviews from attendees. He was the SVC’s 2004 Nathaniel Sugerman Award recipient.
Leon McCrary is retired as the Marketing Manager at Denton Vacuum, LLC. He has over 40 years of experience in vacuum technology and coating development. He holds a patent for the "Ivadizer" process (ion plating of aluminum for corrosion protection onto steel and aluminum alloys) and for a broad beam ion source used for ion-assisted deposition. His current specialty is in optical coaters used primarily for precision optics and telecommunications. He has specialized in the reactive sputtering of oxide coatings on a large scale and the development of applying new coating technology to production equipment. He was on the Board of Directors of the SVC for a number of years and was the Treasurer of the Society for six years.
Dale E. Morton has retired as the Process R&D Manager of the High Vacuum Equipment Division of Denton Vacuum, LLC. He also was Product Manager for the cold cathode ion source product line. He has 35 years of experience in design and process development for optical thin film applications with a strong emphasis on the characterization of the optical properties of thin film materials. He is a past director of the SVC (1994 to 2000) and is a former Optical Coating TAC Chair (1993 to 1995) and Program Chair (1997 to 1999) for the SVC Annual Technical Conference.
Holger Nörenberg is founder and Managing Director of Technolox Ltd., which specializes in novel permeation measurement equipment. During his time as Academic Director of Research at the University of Oxford, Oxford-Toppan Center, he was responsible for the development of permeation measurement equipment. He has a physics degree from the University of Rostock and worked in Germany, Japan and the UK. He has about 50 scientific and technical publication as well as several patent applications.
John F. O’Hanlon is Professor Emeritus of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the University of Arizona. He retired from IBM Research Division in 1987, where he was involved in thin-film deposition, vacuum processing, and display technology. He retired from UA in 2002, where he directed the NSF Ind./Univ. Center for Microcontamination Control. His research focused on particles in plasmas, cleanrooms, and ultrapure water contamination. He is the author of A User’s Guide to Vacuum Technology, 3rd edition. (John Wiley & Sons, 2003).
Thomas Schuelke holds M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in physics and has worked for the Fraunhofer Society for thirteen years. He gained industrial experience in the semiconductor industry. Currently he manages Fraunhofer USA’s activities in advanced industrial coating technologies. His team performs applied R&D projects for industry and government with a focus on carbon-based materials.
S. Ismat Shah graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1986 from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. He worked for the DuPont Company as senior Staff Scientist for 12 years before joining the University of Delaware in 1999 where he has a joint appointment in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Department of Physics and Astronomy. He has been involved in the field of thin films and nanostructured materials for 22 years. He has over 120 publications in the field and 5 patents awarded. He is the Chair of the SVC Education Committee. He teaches the first online course offered by the SVC, in collaboration with the University of Delaware, on Vapor Deposition Processes. He also teaches the SVC course on Physical Vapor Deposition Processes.
Dr. Arthur Sherman has been active in industrial R&D for many years. He received a Ph.D. in Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, and has worked for General Electric, RCA, Applied Materials, and Varian Associates. Recent activities have been in the field of Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD), and more recently Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD). He is the author of over 50 papers, 10 patents, and two texts - including one on CVD.
Bill Sproul is the founder and owner of Reactive Sputtering, Inc. Prior to starting his own company, he worked at Advanced Energy Industries, the Borg-Warner Corporation, Northwestern University, and Sputtered Films, Inc. Throughout his career he has been involved with the sputter deposition of hard materials for wear and corrosion applications. He is the author or co-author of more than 149 technical papers. He has 11 patents to his credit, and he is the inventor of the high rate reactive sputtering process. He is a past president of the American Vacuum Society, and he chaired the International Conference on Metallurgical Coating and Thin Films (ICMCTF) three times. He is an AVS Fellow, and in 2003 he received the SVC Mentor Award and the AVS Thornton Award. He is currently serves on the SVC Board of Directors, and he is the ICMCTF treasurer.
Johannes Strümpfel graduated as a physicist at the Technical University in Dresden, Germany in 1973. He developed the main features of the Plasma Emission Monitor (PEM®) to control reactive magnetron sputtering processes. This experience was the basis for sputter deposition of oxide and nitride films at high rates. Now he is responsible as chief scientist of the company VON ARDENNE Anlagentechnik GmbH in Dresden, Germany, which provides sputter coaters for production of large area optical coatings on glass and webs.
Gerry van der Kolk has studied physics and has received his Ph.D at Delft University. His working experience is partly R&D (Delft University, Philips Research, Brookhaven NL), partly equipment building (Gemco, Hauzer). His present position is Director of Ionbond Europe and global co-ordinator for the segment Components, in which he is involved in application development of DLC's.
Gary Vergason founded Vergason Technology, Inc., in 1986 and has been working with and designing industrial vacuum arc equipment since 1981. His production equipment design experience is reflected in Multi-Arc and Perkin-Elmer coating systems as well as enhanced upgrades on Vac-Tech systems. He is an inventor/co-inventor of five vacuum arc related patents and has performed considerable research in the area of arc travel speed on the cathode as it relates to improved coating quality.
Ronald R. Willey graduated from the MIT in optical instrumentation, has an M.S. from FIT, and over 35 years of experience in optical system and coating development and production. He is very experienced in practical thin films design, process development, and the application of industrial Design Of Experiments methodology. He is the inventor of a robust plasma/ion source for optical coating applications. He worked in optical instrument development and production at Perkin-Elmer and Block Associates. He developed automatic lens design programs at United Aircraft Research Laboratories. He formed Willey Corporation in 1964 and served a wide variety of clients with consulting, development, prototypes, and production. In 1981 he joined Martin Marietta Aerospace and was Director of the Optical Component Center where he was responsible for optical fabrication, coating, and assembly. He joined Opto Mechanik in 1985 where he was responsible for the development of all new technologies, new instruments, and production engineering. He was a Staff Scientist at Hughes Danbury Optical Systems. He holds four patents and has published many papers and a book on optical coating, optical design, and economics of optical tolerances. He is a fellow of the Optical Society of America and SPIE and a past Director of the Society of Vacuum Coaters. He now is a consultant in the above-listed technical areas.
Curtis J. Zimmermann is the Research Manager for New Technologies in the Appearance & Performance Division of Engelhard Corporation. He earned his Ph.D. in physical chemistry with a research emphasis in colloidal science from Clarkson University. At Engelhard, he is working in the arena of fine particle technology with an emphasis on thin film coatings on particulate materials. His research interests include fine particle synthesis and coating technology utilizing aqueous, hydrothermal, solvent, and vapor techniques for decorative and/or functional performance. He has a strong background in chemistry and materials science with a specialty in fine particle science, thin film coating technology, and surface science. His current responsibilities include new product conceptualization through production, harvesting technology, and intellectual property management. Prior to joining Engelhard, he worked in powder technology applied to military obscuration.