To close out 2018, we exhibited at the Fall Materials Research Society conference. As we usually do during the show, we took time to attend technical talks. Knowing the course that research is taking helps us to best meet the needs of researchers. Besides, the discoveries themselves are fascinating to take in! We’re reviewing what we learned and building on that knowledge as we kick off 2019. They say it’s all in the delivery—and this is becoming truer of combinatorial deposition. The relative flux of the sputtered components is not the only determinant of the properties and performance of a combinatorial candidate material. Two of the talks we attended brought this point home:

Talk about a field that is exploding with innovation potential! Two members of the PVD Products team recently had the chance to attend a workshop at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) on accelerated discovery for energy materials.