The Symposium on Reactive Sputter Deposition was established in 2000, providing a platform for discussing recent achievements in reactive sputter deposition and thin films among leading international scientists, engineers and students. The Symposium has developed to an annual tradition, being organised in the past years by the Belgian, Dutch and Austrian Vacuum Societies and held in Gent ( Belgium ), Delft (The Netherlands) and Leoben (Austria).

This symposium will address:

1. New Developments in Reactive Sputtering: HIPIMS, pulsed reactive sputtering, process control, high rate sputtering, etc.
   Invited speaker: Ralf Bandorf, IST Fraunhofer, ‘Alumina coatings deposited by HIPIMS’
   
2. Plasma diagnostics and Process Modelling: development of diagnostic techniques for reactive environments, reactive sputtering models, etc.
   Invited speaker: Stanislav Mraz, RWTH Aachen University, ‘Negative ions in magnetron sputtering plasmas’
3. Film Growth and Characterisation: interrelationships between process parameters and film structures and properties, high resolution analytical techniques, etc.
   Invited speaker: Wouter Leroy, University of Gent, ‘Linking reactive sputtering models to experimental reality by determining the real-time parameters’
   
4. Industrial Applications and Practice: industrial scale process control, new developments and applications, future trends and markets, system design, scale up issues, etc.
   Invited speakers: Johannes Struempfel, Von Ardenne, ‘Industrial Magnetron Sputtering for Photovoltaic and Architectural Glass Coating’