About

Laboratory for Optical Spectroscopy of Nanostructures (LOSN) has been established at the initiative of professor Jan Misiewicz in 1992.

In the beginning, its research activity was focused on application of photoreflectance spectroscopy (an electro-modulation technique, employing optical excitation) to investigation of low-dimensional semiconductor structures. Photoreflectance belongs to the family of absorption-like techniques, which together with emission-like spectroscopy, such as photoluminescence, allow observation and analysis of inter and intra-band optical transitions.

In the early period the research was realised on structures grown by metalorganic chemical vapour deposition in laboratories of Marek Tłaczała at Wrocław University of Science and Technology and Jacek Baranowski at the University of Warsaw, based on III-V semiconductors; and molecular beam epitaxy grown II-VI semiconductors from the laboratory of Jacek Kossut at the Institute of Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw.

Funding was provided at first by the Strategic Programme – The development of technology and research of low dimensional semiconductor structures, supervised by Jan Gaj from the University of Warsaw.

The next significant advancement of the Lab occurred after collaboration with technological laboratories in Nottingham and Copenhagen was established. In particular, purchase of a magnetic coil allowed optical measurements in external magnetic fields up to 5 Tesla (as shown in the picture above) and a new optical spectroscopy technique, photoluminescence excitation, was introduced.

First PhD theses realised at LOSN were defended in 1998.

Rapid development of the Lab can be traced back to 1998, to the beginnings of a cooperation with Technische Physik group, which had been established and lead by prof. Alfred Forchel at the University of Würzburg. In particular, participation in six European Commission projects has allowed for its considerable expansion, including an installation of a time-resolved optical spectroscopy set-up, with a support of prof. Manfred Bayer from the Technical University of Dortmund (its current form can be seen in the picture below).

Due to the broadening research scope of LOSN, new team leaders have naturally emerged, in the first wave they were Leszek Bryja, Robert Kudrawiec and Grzegorz Sęk, later joined by Artur Podhorodecki, Marcin Motyka and Marcin Syperek. Recently LOSN was also joined by Paulina Płochocka-Maude from Laboratoire National des Champs Magnétiques Intenses in Toulouse.

Up to this moment, 30 PhD and 11 habilitation theses have been realized and defended in LOSN.

Currently the Lab is affiliated with the Department of Experimental Physics (chaired by Grzegorz Sęk) and the Department of Semiconductors Materials Engineering (chaired by Robert Kudrawiec). It unites several active research teams, pursuing various optical spectroscopy techniques for strongly application-oriented investigations of new semiconducting materials and heterostructures, such as quantum well and quantum dot systems; but also 2D materials and perovskites.