Seán Thomas

Seán Barry is a Full Professor at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada), where he works on precursor compounds for atomic layer deposition (ALD).

Seán was trained in inorganic synthetic chemistry by Darrin Richeson (PhD, University of Ottawa, 1996), and spent three years working on chemical vapour deposition (CVD) and ALD precursors in the group of Roy Gordon (PDF, Harvard University, 1998 – 2000, 2002 -2003). He was instrumental in the design and synthesis of the well-known copper amidinate dimers that are presently used for copper CVD/ALD.

He started in Carleton University in 2003 working on guanidinates of the group 13 metals (Al, Ga, In), and has recently studied guanidinates, iminopyrrolidinates, and carbenes of the coinage metals (Cu, Ag, Au) for depositing thin films of these metals. His group works mainly on the mechanisms of thermal decomposition and thin film deposition and has invented several novel characterization methods to better understand mechanism. Seán is also the director of the Facility for Nanoscience, Surfaces, and Sensor Interfaces (FANSSI), which was commissioned in 2015 by a $1.9M Canadian infrastructure grant to study surface chemistry and ALD.

He is recognized as a world expert in metal ALD and precursor design. He has long-standing and extensive industrial collaborations in ALD, including ASM, Lam, Air Liquide, the Royal Canadian Mint, and BASF, to name a few. He has over 100 papers and 6 patents in ALD precursor and process design: 4 of the patents were established while an independent researcher at Carleton.

He has served as a scientific advisor for the AVS ALD, Baltic ALD and EuroCVD meetings, and was a co-organizer of the joint EuroCVD/Baltic ALD meeting in Linköping, Sweden in 2017, as well as the co-chair of the Surface Science division of the 2015 CSC conference in Ottawa. He chaired the AVS ALD 2021 meeting in Tampa, Florida.