The New Semiconductor Materials Laboratory (LNMS) began its research activities in 1989 under the leadership of Prof. José Roberto Leite (in memoriam). One year later a complete system of molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) was purchased to provide high quality III-V compound semiconductor heterostructures to the scientific community.

 

      In 1995 Prof. Alain André Quivy was appointed to coordinate research activities related to the growth and characterization of samples produced by the LNMS MBE system. During the years 1998 and 1999, thanks to funding from FAPESP, the MBE system was further expanded and became capable of producing all kinds of samples ranging from doped thick layers to low dimensionality heterostructures (wells and quantum dots) which are applied in both basic research and advanced devices such as light emitting diodes (LEDs), semiconductor lasers and high mobility transistors (HEMTs). LNMS also does characterization with photoluminescence experiments (PL), photoluminescence excitation (PLE), Hall effect and Shubnikov-de Haas effect, as well as a cutting-edge scanning microscope (AFM, STM, MFM, EFM) that provide insightful information on the optical, electrical and morphological properties of the grown samples.

 

      Starting in 2007 the Molecular Beam Epitaxy Group incorporated additional research lines related to the manufacturing and investigation of optoelectronic devices such as infrared photodetectors and solar cells. To attend these demands a new 18 m² class 1000 cleanroom capable of handling photolithographic processing was planned and installed in 2015. By the same time, several other equipment were also purchased for the complete processing and further optical and electrical testing of those devices.