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Organization

Director

The director of PDI, Prof. Dr. Roman Engel-Herbert, is responsible for the institute and its scientific program and output. Roman’s career as a physicist brought him from Germany to North America, where he worked as a postdoc before accepting a professorship in 2010 at Pennsylvania State University. In 2021, Roman returned to Germany and became Director of PDI, 15 years after completing his PhD there under the direction of Klaus H. Ploog and Thorsten Hesjedal.

Managing Director

PDI is one of seven research institutes within the Forschungsverbund Berlin e.V. (FVB). All institutes share a common legal entity and administrative infrastructure while maintaining scientific autonomy. The administrative director of FVB, Martin Böhnke, functions as the managing director of the institutes.

Departments

Epitaxy

The Department of Epitaxy specializes in the growth of crystalline thin films and nanostructures with extremely well-defined properties. Our core competency is in molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) and our work focuses on two complementary tasks: fabricating custom-designed nanostructured samples for the institute and our collaborators, and conducting research on growth mechanisms, allowing us to optimize and manipulate their properties for future technologies. Our labs house eleven MBE systems, operated by a team of knowledgeable scientists and technicians who are committed to the advancement of research in materials science. ... read more

Microstructure

The Department of Microstructure focuses on the analysis of microstructures and the exploration of their structure-property-relationships. We use techniques such as x-ray and electron diffraction, transmission electron and scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy to analyze the structural, electronic and mechanical properties of a wide range of materials and quantum systems. Our powerful scanning transmission electron microscope is used for electron tomography to visualize and analyze the three-dimensional structure and chemical information of complex materials with sub-nanometer resolution. Our team is responsible for the operational use of the PHARAO beamline at the Berlin synchrotron BESSY II - a third generation synchrotron radiation source, unique in Germany, to observe in-situ growth during molecular beam epitaxy by means of diffraction experiments. ... read more

Semiconductor Spectroscopy

The Department of Semiconductor Spectroscopy is dedicated to the spectroscopic investigation of thin films, nanostructures, heterostructures, and devices. Our core competence is the fundamental study of electronic, magnetic, photonic and phononic (transport) properties of novel materials and nanostructures. Besides individual nanostructures and epitaxial films, we investigate complex device structures such as THz lasers, UV light emitters and polariton cavity structures for quantum technologies. The combination of advanced spectroscopic methods at the extremes of milli-Kelvin temperature, femtosecond timescales, nanometer resolution and high magnetic fields is a hallmark of the department's innovative research. ... read more

Core Research Areas

Nanofabrication

The subject of this core research area is the fabrication of novel types of crystalline thin films and nanostructures and the investigation of fundamental growth mechanisms. … read more

Nanoanalytics

The ongoing miniaturization in semiconductor technology calls for precise information on the structure and composition of low-dimensional systems and nanoscale devices. Accordingly, the central aim of this Core Research Area is to clarify the fundamental structure-property relation of these systems. … read more

Nanoelectronics

Semiconductor-based technology platforms for data communication, processing, and storage based on quantum phenomena are becoming increasingly more important. The CReA Nanoelectronics explores the quantum effects and quantum mechanical quantities necessary for technologies such as quantum computing, secure data communication, and artificial intelligence. … read more

III-V Nanowires for Optoelectronics

Semiconductor nanowires are structures with an extremely high aspect ratio and a diameter typically smaller than 100 nm. In bottom-up approaches, feature sizes down to 10 nm and below can be achieved without any lithography. Complementary top-down approaches offer higher level of control, in particular for the fabrication of regular nanowire arrays. The quasi-one-dimensional shape and the nanometric size of nanowires result in unique properties, often independently of the concrete nanowire material. Their characteristics make nanowires an exciting subject for fundamental studies and offer many conceptual advantages for various applications. … read more

Control of Elementary Excitations by Acoustic Fields

Solid state systems host a plethora of useful crystal excitations, e.g., electrons, holes, excitons, polaritons and magnons, to name a few. Future electronic and optoelectronic (quantum) devices will critically depend on the precise control (i.e., transport, tuning of the energy spectrum, etc.) of the aforementioned material excitations. The latter are very sensitive to the changes of the relative positions of atoms in the crystal lattice (i.e. the strain). Phonons, which are quanta of lattice vibrational modes, have been recognized as a useful source of dynamic strain. … read more

Intersubband Emitters: GaAs-based Quantum-Cascade Lasers

Quantum-cascade lasers based on the GaAs/(Al,Ga)As materials system are very useful radiation sources for many applications in the terahertz (THz) spectral region. This spectral region ranges typically from 0.1 to 10 THz bridging the electronics-based microwave region with the optics-based infrared region. … read more

Scientific Advisory Board

PDI's scientific advisory board consists of outstanding national and international researchers. They advise the institute on scientific matters, discuss its scientific strategy, and once a year evaluate its research activities. The current members are: