International Collaborative
Research Centre TRR160

Ioffe-Institute

The Ioffe Institute is one of Russia’s largest institutions for research in physics and technology covering a wide variety of topics. The main research lines pursued at the Ioffe Institute in different branches are the physics of nano- and heterostructures, solid state physics and electronics, the physics of semiconductors and dielectrics as well as plasma and atomic physics. In particular, the semiconductor-based activities have world-wide recognition, looking back on pioneering contributions to the optical spectroscopy of semiconductors and their nanostructures and the physics of photonic crystals. The first observation of excitons in semiconductors has been made at the Ioffe Institute, followed by detailed studies of the physics of excitons and exciton-polaritons. Also semiconductor lasers were developed at the Ioffe Institute. Furthermore, Ioffe researchers have been pioneers in the spin physics of semiconductors with major contributions both in theory of spin-dependent phenomena and experiment such as spin-resonance techniques. These works peaked first in the 1970-80s and have been taken to a new level in the recent decade when spintronics has become a rapidly expanding research field.

According to the Web of Science, the Ioffe-Institute is ranked first among Russian research organizations according to the total citation index.

Today the Ioffe activities cover the whole range of activities required for successful research, from expert fabrication of nanostructures including their detailed characterization to advanced spectroscopy of these systems and further to theoretical modeling of the observation and prediction of novel phenomena. The available experimental facilities have been boosted by two Megagrants, which have been used to establish two laboratories, the “Multiferroics Laboratory” (PI: Alexander Tagantsev) and the “SpinOptronics Laboratory” (PI: Manfred Bayer). The facilities of these laboratories will be accessible to the ICRC.

The Ioffe Institute publishes four journals: Journal of Technical Physics, Technical Physics Letters, Physics of the Solid State, and Semiconductors, all of high renown both in Russia and abroad. Besides core funding, the Ioffe researchers participate in projects funded by the Federal Target Program "Research and Pedagogical Cadre for Innovative Russia", the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, Skoltech and the European Community.

The Ioffe Institute is closely linked with educational centers: the St. Petersburg State Polytechnical and Electrotechnical Universities, the Academic University and the St. Petersburg State University where several chairs provide training of undergraduate students who later enter PhD courses at the Ioffe Institute. Ioffe Institute maintains long-standing cooperations with scientists from abroad and in particularly from Germany, France, UK, and USA.

For more than a decade TU Dortmund has been establishing links to research groups in Russia with a particular focus on St. Petersburg. In fact, these links date back into the early 90s when Dietmar Fröhlich initiated collaboration with Roman Pisarev (Ioffe Institute) on non-linear optics of strongly correlated materials. Since 2002 the collaboration between St. Petersburg and Dortmund has been greatly intensified, which was facilitated by two researchers at Experimentelle Physik 2 (Dmitri Yakovlev and Ilya Akimov, both graduates of the Ioffe Institute). The collaboration is based on vastly overlapping joint research interests in the spin physics of semiconductors. Starting from 2005 collaboration with St. Petersburg State University has been established, so far addressing mostly the impact of the nuclear spin bath on carrier spin coherence.

• Semiconductor Optic Laboratory (лаборатория оптики полупроводников)
• Microwave Spectroskopy of Сrystal (лаборатория микроволновой спектроскопии кристаллов)
• Quantum-size Heterostructures (лаборатория квантоворазмерных гетероструктур)
• Theory of Quantum Coherent Phenomena in Solids (сектор теории квантовых когерентных явлений)
• Department of Theoretical Bases of Microelectronics (сектор теоретических основ микроэлектроники)
• Ferroics Physics Laboratory (лаборатория физики ферроиков)
• Laboratory for optical phenomena in magnetic and ferroelectric crystals (лаборатория оптических явлений в магнитных и сегнетоэлектрических кристаллах)
• Amorphous Semiconductors Laboratory (лаборатория физики аморфных полупроводников)