Abstract
Semiconductor Lasers present an exceptional success story of breakthroughs in fundamental physics. A fundamentally new effect - stimulated emission from a p-n-diode - was observed, but at low temperatures only. By intelligent band structure engineering the door was opened in 1970 by Alferov and Krömer for room temperature operation (Nobel Prize 2000). The following 25 years double heterostructure lasers became the enabling devices for intercontinental optical communication, the basis of the internet. 50 years after discovery, 2010, vertical and edge emitting semiconductor lasers, based on an ever increasing variety of material systems and nanostructures, operating from the UV to the middle IR, at very small mW or very large kW output power, present a backbone of modern energy efficient systems, being omnipresent in our daily life. DVDs, the optical mouse, the Terabus, the 100 G Ethernet, material processing, medical applications,,.. exemplify the ever increasing economic importance of a discovery which was thought to be useless 50 years ago.
About the speaker
Dieter Bimberg received his Diploma in physics and PhD degree from Goethe University, Frankfurt, in 1968 and 1971 respectively. From 1972 to 1979 he held a Principal Scientist position at the Max Planck-Institute for Solid State Research in Grenoble/France and Stuttgart. In 1979 he was appointed as Professor of Electrical Engineering, Technical University of Aachen.
Since 1981 he has been holding the Chair of Applied Solid State Physics at Technical University of Berlin. He was elected in 1990 and successively reelected as Executive Director of the Solid State Physics Institute at TU Berlin. Since 2004 he has been director of the Center of Nanophotonics at TU Berlin. In 2006 he was elected as chairman of the board of the German National Centers of Excellence of Nanotechnologies. His honors include the Russian State Prize in Science and Technology 2001, in 2004 his election to the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and as Fellow of the American Physical Society, and the Max-Born-Award and Medal 2006, awarded jointly by IoP and DPG and the 2010 William Streifer Scientific Achievement award of IEEE. Since 2010 he has also been Fellow of IEEE. He has authored more than 900 papers, patents, and books resulting in more than 24000 citations worldwide. His research interests include the growth and physics of nanostructures and nanophotonic devices, ultrahigh speed photonic devices for the future Terabus and the 100 Gbit/s Ethernet, plasmonic nanolasers, single and entangled photon emitters for quantum cryptography and ultimate nanomemories based on quantum dots.
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