PhD 

Tuomo Suntola graduated MSc (1967) and Ph.D. (1971) in Electron Physics in the Electrical Engineering Department at Helsinki University of Technology. He entered to materials sciences and thin film technologies by solving the late 60’s mystery of the nanosecond switching mechanism in “Ovonic” thin film devices as his doctoral dissertation. His first industrial work was “Humicap®” thin film humidity sensor for Vaisala Oy (1973) which still, almost 50 years later holds the world market leader’s position in humidity sensing, and has been used, e.g., in NASA’s Mars landers. He was invited to Instrumentarium Oy where he in 1974 introduced the Atomic Layer Epitaxy (ALE) process, which after development for productional capability, became the leading technology for electroluminescent flat panel displays. After further development at Microchemistry Ltd, the ALE technology and machinery reached the requirements for advanced semiconductor processing. Renamed Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD), the technology has merged into IC manufacturing, enabling extreme conformality and controlled processing of ultra-thin material layers of a few atomic layers. Suntola’s technologist’s career produced many important patents, vital industrial applications, and scientific papers. His technological impact was complemented by work on photovoltaic devices and insightful analyses of global energy challenges. Since his graduate student times, Suntola has been pondering the basis of physics, theory structures, and the underlying picture of reality. In the 1990s, the thinking materialized into the Dynamic Universe theory that after maturing and testing for 25 years is documented in the book The Dynamic Universe – Toward a Unified Picture of Physical Reality.