Group History

From Semiconductor Spectroscopy and Devices

The Semiconductor Spectroscopy and Devices group at the University of Strathclyde began its activities in 1987 as a wing of Professor Brian Henderson's Solid State Materials Group. It became a separate entity in 1990 with a mission "to explore the optoelectronic device capabilities of less-well-developed semiconductors": at first, visibly emitting semiconductor compounds from the Zn(Cd)S(Se) family.

Superlattices and quantum wells, including ZnSe-ZnS, CdSe-ZnSe, CdS-ZnS, CdSe-CdS (hex) and CdS-ZnSe (hex-cubic), have since been studied in detail.

In 1991, we began studies of the novel semiconductor porous silicon. Since 1993 magneto-optic studies of strained-layer III-V heterostructures have joined the list, and more recently (since 1995) we have worked on

• gallium nitride (GaN)
• indium gallium nitride (In_xGa_1-xN)
• silicon quantum dots
• chalcopyrites (e.g. CuInSe₂, Cu(In,Ga)Se₂)
• zinc oxide (ZnO)
• cuprate superconductors
• dilute nitrides
• geological minerals (e.g. calcite, zircon)
• fossilised trilobite eyes
• 9^th century Chinese paper…

…in fact, just about anything that glows.

The group has hosted a number of national and international conferences, including:

• RMS Electron Backscatter Diffraction Conference, 3^th-4^th April 2006
• 5^th International Conference on the Physics of Light-Matter Coupling in Nanostructures (PLMCN-5), 8^th-11^th June 2005