Condensed Matter Physics: Physics of Defects and Impurities in Nonmetallic Solids

	Physics of Defects and Impurities in Nonmetallic Solids

Dr. Volkmar Dierolf Dr. Beall Fowler Dr. Michael Stavola

Understanding defects and impurities is essential to understanding electronic and photonic materials and the devices made from them. The goal of this program is to determine and understand the fundamental properties of defects in semiconductors and insulators that are important in technology. For example, defects in insulators and wide bandgap semiconductors are studied by the use of high-resolution spectroscopy and microscopy, with particular interest in the optical properties and domain inversion in ferroelectrics, and the optical properties of quantum structures in InAlGaN for application as active layers in UV lasers. In other studies, vibrational spectroscopy is used to investigate the structures and properties of defects that contain light-element impurities such as H, C, O, and N that play an important role in determining the electronic properties of semiconductors such as GaN, ZnO and GaAsN that are of current technological interest. Complementary studies using both analytical theory and ab initio computational methods focus on the properties of defects in semiconductors and MOS oxides.