Prof. Diederik Depla
Prof. Dr. D. Depla has received his Master Degree in Chemistry in 1991 at Ghent University (Belgium). In 1996 he promoted with a PhD thesis in Solid State Chemistry on spray drying of precursors for superconductors. After a short period as senior scientist in the Department of Solid State Sciences, he became in 1999 Professor at the same department. His research focuses on the fundamental aspects of reactive magnetron sputter deposition. He has shown the importance of ion implantation on this process, and explained the discharge voltage behavior during reactive sputter deposition. In this way, his continuous research in this area resulted in several publications. He is now head of the research group “Dedicated research on advanced films and targets(DRAFT)” in the same department. More details can be found on www.draft.ugent.be. He is now the president of the Belgian Vaccum Society.