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Pamburayi Mpofu

Principal Research Engineer

I am an experimental materials scientist and trained chemist, with research interests focused on chemical vapor deposition and etching of thin layers of materials.

Presentation

Research

I am a principal research engineer in materials chemistry and a member of the Pedersen Group in the Department of Physics, Chemistry, and Biology at Linköping University in Sweden; where I received both an MSc in Chemistry in 2021 and a PhD in Materials Chemistry in 2025.

My research interests are in inorganic materials chemistry with a focus on atomic layer deposition (ALD). I have been working on understanding, on a fundamental atomic level, the surface chemistry governing the deposition of metastable ternary nitride thin layers of materials by time-resolved chemical vapor deposition (CVD) and or ALD, for protective hard coating applications (https://doi.org/10.3384/9789181182248)

Currently, I’m collaborating with Swedish industry in the manufacture of semiconductor components and other projects around deposition and etching of different materials. I’m also responsible for equipment in research labs, guiding and assisting doctoral students and thesis workers.

Publications

2025

Pamburayi Mpofu, Tommy Larsson, Oscar Alm, Jonas Lauridsen, Kenichiro Mizohata, Ben F. Spencer, Hans Högberg, Kostas Sarakinos, Henrik Pedersen (2025) On the reliability of Vegard's law in compositional analysis of chemical vapor deposited AlxTi1-xN Surface & Coatings Technology, Vol. 518, Article 132898 (Article in journal) Continue to DOI
Pamburayi Mpofu (2025) Divide in Time to Conquer the Surface: ALD Studies to Understand Surface Chemistry of AlxTi1-xN CVD
Pamburayi Mpofu, Pentti Niiranen, Oscar Alm, Jonas Lauridsen, Tommy Larsson, Henrik Pedersen (2025) Atomic layer deposition of AlxTi1-xN via co-evaporation of metal precursors Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology. A. Vacuum, Surfaces, and Films, Vol. 43, Article 032405 (Article in journal) Continue to DOI
Arun Haridas Choolakkal, Pamburayi Mpofu, Pentti Niiranen, Jens Birch, Henrik Pedersen (2025) Using a Heavy Inert Diffusion Additive for Superconformal Atomic Layer Deposition The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, Vol. 16, p. 2369-2372 (Article in journal) Continue to DOI

2024

Pamburayi Mpofu, Houyem Hafdi, Jonas Lauridsen, Oscar Alm, Tommy Larsson, Henrik Pedersen (2024) A mass spectrometrical surface chemistry study of aluminum nitride ALD from tris-dimethylamido aluminum and ammonia Materials Advances, Vol. 5, p. 9259-9269 (Article in journal) Continue to DOI