Silver has been recognized as a nontoxic, safe inorganic antibacterial/antifungal agent used for centuries. Silver demonstrates a very high potential in a wide range of biological applications, more particularly in the form of nanoparticles. Environmentally friendly synthesis methods are becoming more and more popular in chemistry and chemical technologies and the need for ecological methods of synthesis is increasing; the aim is to reduce polluting reaction by-products. Another important advantage of green synthesis methods lies in its cost-effectiveness and in the abundance of raw materials. During the last five years, many efforts were put into developing new greener and cheaper methods for the synthesis of nanoparticles. The cost decrease and less harmful synthesis methods have been the motivation in comparison to other synthesis techniques where harmful reductive organic species produce hazardous by-products. This environment-friendly aspect has now become a major social issue and is instrumental in combatting environmental pollution through reduction or elimination of hazardous materials. This review describes a brief overview of the research on green synthesis of silver metal nanoparticles and the influence of the method on their size and morphology.

Atomic layer deposition (ALD), a gas-phase thin film deposition technique based on repeated, self-terminating gas–solid reactions, has become the method of choice in semiconductor manufacturing and many other technological areas for depositing thin conformal inorganic material layers for various applications. ALD has been discovered and developed independently, at least twice, under different names: atomic layer epitaxy (ALE) and molecular layering. ALE, dating back to 1974 in Finland, has been commonly known as the origin of ALD, while work done since the 1960s in the Soviet Union under the name “molecular layering” (and sometimes other names) has remained much less known. The virtual project on the history of ALD (VPHA) is a volunteer-based effort with open participation, set up to make the early days of ALD more transparent. In VPHA, started in July 2013, the target is to list, read and comment on all early ALD academic and patent literature up to 1986. VPHA has resulted in two essays and several presentations at international conferences. This paper, based on a poster presentation at the 16th International Conference on Atomic Layer Deposition in Dublin, Ireland, 2016, presents a recommended reading list of early ALD publications, created collectively by the VPHA participants through voting. The list contains 22 publications from Finland, Japan, Soviet Union, United Kingdom, and United States. Up to now, a balanced overview regarding the early history of ALD has been missing; the current list is an attempt to remedy this deficiency.

Addition of yttrium in $\mathrm{Hf}{\mathrm{O}}_2$ thin films prepared on silicon by metal organic chemical vapor deposition is investigated in a wide compositional range $(2.0–99.5\mathrm{at.}\%)$ . The cubic structure of $\mathrm{Hf}{\mathrm{O}}_2$ is stabilized for $6.5\mathrm{at.}\%$ . The permittivity is maximum for yttrium content of $6.5–10\mathrm{at.}\%$ ; in this range, the effective permittivity, which results from the contribution of both the cubic phase and silicate phase, is of 22. These films exhibit low leakage current density ($5\times {10}^{-7}\mathrm{A}∕{\mathrm{cm}}^2$ at $-1\mathrm{V}$ for a $6.4\mathrm{nm}$ film). The cubic phase is stable upon postdeposition high temperature annealing at $900°\mathrm{C}$ under $\mathrm{N}{\mathrm{H}}_3$ .

Hafnium dioxide is a wide band-gap, high-κ material, and Hafnium based compounds have already been integrated into micro-electronic devices. The pure cubic HfO₂ phase is promising as it presents a higher permittivity (κ > 25), but needs to be stabilized by addition of divalent or trivalent dopants, which in turn modify the electronic properties of HfO₂. Here, we employ a one-pot synthesis approach to produce undoped cubic and monoclinic HfO₂ nanoparticles by choice of solvent alone. The average size of these nanoparticles from transmission electron microscopy studies was estimated to be around 2.6 nm. We present a study of the morphology and microstructure and also demonstrate the presence of a strong visible photoluminescence linked to the nanosize of the particles. Furthermore, the synthesis in equivalent conditions of these two phases of HfO₂ provides means for direct comparison of the chemical composition and electronic structures of the two polymorphs. This has therefore allowed us to experimentally elucidate similarities and differences in the valence band, band gap states, and conduction band of these pure phases seconded by first principles calculations within the density functional theory.