Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique – Laboratoire de Photonique et de Nanostructures

Address:

Site Alcatel de Marcoussis, Route de Nozay, 91460 Marcoussis

Country:

France

Website:

http://www.lpn.cnrs.fr

Organisation type:

Commercial

Storage activities:

study of nanostructures, electron gases and spin electronics as well as microelectronic and photonic devices

Profile:

The LPN (Laboratory for Photonics and Nanostructures) is a fully-owned unit of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) under the CNRS Departments of SPM (Sciences, Physics, and Mathematics) and STIC (Sciences and Technologies for Information and Communication).

Its main purpose is to promote basic and applied research in a coordinated fashion, both in internally-generated research activities and in activities carried out in partnership with other public or private laboratories, through the use and further development of its semiconductor fabrication and processing facilities.

The research strategy of the Laboratory, conditioned by its goals and by its nationwide role as a central technological facility, is made possible thanks to the wide spectrum of scientific and technical skills brought together in the Laboratory. It involves multi-disciplinary research that ranges from fundamental to applied physics, in a large variety of research areas including: quantum optics, nonlinear optics, spin electronics, quantum transport, physics of nanostructures, nanomagnetism, photonics, microfluidics, materials science, device physics, optoelectronics, fabrication and processing of materials. The synergy that results favors the emergence of new avenues of research and the budding of novel concepts that can lead to applications, bridging academic research with industry.

The range of research themes carried out at LPN illustrates the cross-fertilization between research and technology. LPN is present throughout the chain of innovation, from research on novel concepts leading to new functions and research on materials and technologies, to their implementation and to the demonstration of feasibility of new devices. At the same time, the research activities of LPN open new perspectives for potential applications in the fields of quantum information processing, optical communications, all-optical signal processing, high-density information storage, or microfluidics coupled to nanostructures, a field at the interface between physics, chemistry and biology.

Our research activities are characterized by a strong potential for innovative investigations in the fields of quantum optics, spin electronics, quantum transport, nanostructures, nanomagnetism, photonics, microfluidics, optoelectronics. They open large perspectives of potential applications in the fields of quantum information processing, optical communications, all-optical signal processing, high-density information storage, or the field at the interface between physics, chemistry and biology of microfluidics applications coupled to nanostructures.

Research areas include:

Nanostructures, Electron Gases and Spin Electronics

• These three intimately related aspects of our work, which cover activities in nano-electronics, nano-magnetism, mesoscopic physics, optical electron spin manipulation in quantum dots, electron transport and magnetization reversal in the nano-scale…, constitute important scientific challenges bearing novel effects. Two axes of research, traversing several research teams, appear clearly in this field. The first axis concerns the quantum transport in low dimensionality systems, from carbon nanotubes to semiconductors quantum wires and dots. These nanostrustures, whose dimensions and characteristics can be largely customized, constitute ideal systems for testing innovative theoretical models, thus offering the possibility of answering timely fundamental questions. The similarities with the properties of one-dimensional organic materials leads to a close collaboration with physicists in that field. The ultra-high vacuum low temperature STM spectroscopy contributes to this cross-fertilization. The second axis consists of the exploration of the optical, electro-optical, magneto-optical and magnetic properties of nanostructures. In general, this axis brings into play a significant effort towards the development of materials and technologies, both for mastering high-mobility heterostructures and for growing high quality quantum dots and magnetic heterostructures.

Microelectronic and Photonic Devices

• The goal of this research area is to develop novel devices with performance significantly superior than the state of the art, as well as new functionalities in electronics and optoelectronics (e.g., ultra high frequency transistors, optical memories, low threshold lasers, broad band high bit rate optical regenerators, wavelength commutators and converters, optical-to-millimeter wave converters, optical circuits). Among the devices already explored in this direction, the new structures for HBT and photodetectors, the vertical cavity structures or the optical band gap structures constitute new classes of devices likely to take up the current challenges of optoelectronics in term of cost and performance. Significant issues in this set of activities are the realization of optical functions and lasers based on vertical cavity structures (fast VCSELs and ultrafast regenerating optical gates), of superlattice photo-oscillators, optoelectronic devices for the 1.3-1.5 µm wavelength range (quantum dot laser-modulators, photonic circuits based on optical band gap materials), of high frequency transistors (HBT, HEMT). In the perspective of the integration of III-V optoelectronics and silicon micro-electronics, we work on the development of III-V structures on Ge/Si pseudo-substrates and on the realization of test devices for their validation.

Email:

Tel:

(+33) 1 69 63 61 26

Fax:

Fax : (+33) 1 69 63 60 06