The Reproducibility Crisis in Science from the Perspective of Thin Film Deposition: An Unexpected Approach

Abstract

The publication of scientific results in all disciplines, and in particular in Material Science, has geometrically increased in the last decades. Although the quality of the published results seems to follow the same trend, the feeling that we could be facing a reproducibility crisis has become extended within the scientific community. We discuss this issue in relation to thin film deposition techniques such as atomic layer deposition, which should not present deviations on the reported results due to its self-limiting nature. In particular, we put the focus on the necessity of a multipolar approach that takes into account also the global environment in which researchers perform their work.