Acknowledgments

I would like to pay tribute to John Vossen’s memory for the advice and steadfast encouragement he provided during the writing of the first edition of this book. His influence extended to this edition as well as through the generous gift of much of his personal library on thin film science and technology to me by his widow Joan. These books, together with the John Vossen Laboratory for Vacuum and Thin Film Technology, established at Stevens Institute by the BOC Corp. and Dr. Abe Belkind, its director, have helped to considerably enhance my awareness and knowledge of plasma processing of thin films. In this regard I am particularly grateful to Abe for carefully reviewing the chapters devoted to physical vapor deposition. However, I am solely responsible for the residual errors and holes in my understanding of this and other subject matter treated in the book.

As with the first edition, this book would not have been possible without the wonderfully extensive intellectual (i.e., human) and physical (i.e., library) resources of Bell Laboratories–Lucent Technologies both at Murray Hill and Whippany. Dale Jacobson should be singled out for his continuous help with many aspects of this book. I thank him as well as Rose Kopf and Al Tate, all of Bell Labs, for both large and small favors. The legacy of past and present members of Bell Labs (acknowledged in the first edition), and the spirit of the wonderful students in the Stevens Institute of Technology–Bell Labs “On Premises Approved Program (OPAP),” who originally planted the seed for a textbook on thin films, lives on in this book. That is why I would like to thank them collectively once again.

I am grateful to my dear friend Bob Rosenberg of the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center for introducing me to the field of thin films and its reliability implications more than three decades ago, and thank him for helping me to gather research publications and key figures for this edition. Helpful comments, discussions, graphics, research papers, and encouragement provided by IBM staff members J. C. M. Harper, S. Rossnagel, R. B. Laibowitz, L. Gignac, D. Gupta, F. M. Ross, and K. P. Rodbell are sincerely appreciated.

I also want to thank a group of colleagues, reviewers, and kind readers, too numerous to acknowledge individually, for sending me research preprints and reprints, for pointing out errors in the text and exercises, and for generally expressing an interest in my efforts. Some special people at Stevens played varied but important roles that enabled this book to reach fruition. They include Dick Widdicombe, Brian Moriarty, Justin Meyer, Pat Downes, Diane Gioia, and Professors Ed Whitakker, Wayne Carr, Kurt Becker, Henry Du, Matt Libera, Steve Bloom, and Bernie Gallois; I appreciate their help at critical moments. Lastly, I am indebted to the team of Peggy Flanagan, Marsha Filion, and Julio Esperas at Academic Press for guiding this project to completion.

Perhaps the greatest gift in life is joy from one’s children. That is why this book is dedicated to my children Avi, Noam, and Feigel, and their children Jake, Max, Geffen, and Ami.