When the physicist Alferov became a Nobel laureate. See what "Alferov, Zhores Ivanovich" is in other dictionaries. How it all began

Russian physicist, Nobel Prize winner in 2000. R. 1930

Zhores Ivanovich Alferov was born into a Belarusian-Jewish family of Ivan Karpovich Alferov and Anna Vladimirovna Rosenblum in the Belarusian city of Vitebsk. He received the name in honor of Jean Jaurès, an international fighter against the war, the founder of the newspaper "Humanite". After 1935, the family moved to the Urals, where his father worked as the director of a pulp and paper mill. There Zhores studied from the fifth to the eighth grade. On May 9, 1945, Ivan Karpovich Alferov was sent to Minsk, where Zhores graduated from high school with a gold medal. On the advice of a physics teacher, he went to enter the Leningrad Electrotechnical Institute. IN AND. Ulyanov (Lenin), where he was admitted without exams. He studied at the Faculty of Electronic Engineering.

From his student years, Alferov participated in scientific research. In his third year, he went to work in the vacuum laboratory of Professor B.P. Kozyrev. There he began experimental work under the guidance of N.N. Sozina. So, in 1950, semiconductors became the main business of his life.

In 1953, after graduating from LETI, Alferov was hired by the Physico-Technical Institute. A.F. Ioffe. In the first half of the 1950s, the institute was faced with the problem of creating domestic semiconductor devices for implementation in the domestic industry. The laboratory in which Alferov worked as a junior researcher had the task of acquiring single crystals of pure germanium and creating planar diodes and triodes on its basis. Alferov participated in the development of the first domestic transistors and germanium power devices. For the complex of work carried out in 1959, he received the first government award, in 1961 he defended his Ph.D. thesis.

As a candidate of physical and mathematical sciences, Alferov could move on to developing his own topic. In those years, the idea was put forward to use heterojunctions in semiconductor technology. The creation of perfect structures based on them could lead to a qualitative leap in physics and technology. However, attempts to implement devices based on heterojunctions did not give practical results. The reason for the failures lay in the difficulty of creating a transition close to ideal, identifying and obtaining the necessary heteropairs. In many journal publications and at various scientific conferences, it has been repeatedly said that there are no prospects for carrying out work in this direction.

Alferov continued technological research. They were based on epitaxial methods that allow one to influence the fundamental parameters of a semiconductor: band gap, electron affinity dimension, effective mass of current carriers, refractive index inside a single single crystal. Zh.I. Alferov and his collaborators created not only heterostructures with properties close to the ideal model, but also a semiconductor heterolaser operating in a continuous mode at room temperature. Discovery of Zh.I. Alferov ideal heterojunctions and new physical phenomena - "superinjection", electronic and optical confinement in heterostructures - also made it possible to radically improve the parameters of most known semiconductor devices and form fundamentally new ones, especially promising for use in optical and quantum electronics. Zhores Ivanovich summarized the new period of research on heterojunctions in semiconductors in his doctoral dissertation, which he defended in 1970.

The works of Zh.I. Alferov were duly appreciated by international and domestic science. In 1971, the Franklin Institute (USA) awarded him the prestigious Ballantyne medal, called the "small Nobel Prize" and established to reward the best work in the field of physics. In 1972, the highest award of the USSR, the Lenin Prize, follows.

Using Alferov's technology in Russia (for the first time in the world) the production of heterostructural solar cells for space batteries was organized. One of them, installed in 1986 on the Mir space station, worked in orbit for the entire period of operation without a significant decrease in power.

On the basis of the work of Alferov and his collaborators, semiconductor lasers have been created that operate in a wide spectral region. They have found wide use as radiation sources in long-distance fiber-optic communication lines.

Since the early 1990s, Alferov has been studying the properties of low-dimensional nanostructures: quantum wires and quantum dots. In 1993-1994, for the first time in the world, heterolasers based on structures with quantum dots - "artificial atoms" were realized. In 1995 Zh.I. Alferov and his collaborators demonstrate for the first time an injection quantum dot heterolaser operating in a continuous mode at room temperature. Research Zh.I. Alferov laid the foundations for a fundamentally new electronics based on heterostructures with a wide range of applications, now known as “zone engineering”.

In 1972, Alferov became a professor, and a year later, the head of the basic department of optoelectronics at LETI. From 1987 to May 2003 - Director of the FTI. A.F. Ioffe, from May 2003 to July 2006 - scientific adviser. Since its founding in 1988, he has been the dean of the Faculty of Physics and Technology of St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University.

In 1990–1991, he was Vice-President of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Chairman of the Presidium of the Leningrad Scientific Center. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1979), then of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Honorary Academician of the Russian Academy of Education. Chief editor of "Letters to the Journal of Technical Physics". He was the editor-in-chief of the journal "Physics and Technology of Semiconductors".

On October 10, 2000, all Russian television programs announced the award of Zh.I. Alferov Nobel Prize in Physics for 2000 for the development of semiconductor heterostructures for high-speed optoelectronics. Modern information systems must meet two fundamental requirements: to be fast, so that a huge amount of information can be transferred in a short period of time, and compact, to fit in the office, at home, in a briefcase or pocket. With their discoveries, the Nobel laureates in physics for 2000 created the basis for such modern technology. They discovered and developed fast opto- and microelectronic components, which are created on the basis of multilayer semiconductor heterostructures. Based on heterostructures, high-power, high-performance light-emitting diodes have been created that are used in displays, brake lights in cars, and traffic lights. In heterostructural solar cells, which are widely used in space and ground energy, record-breaking efficiency of converting solar energy into electrical energy has been achieved.

Since 2003, Alferov has been the chairman of the scientific and educational complex "St. Petersburg Physical and Technical Scientific and Educational Center" of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Alferov gave part of his Nobel Prize for the development of the scientific and educational center of the Institute of Physics and Technology. “Still schoolchildren come to the center, they study according to an in-depth program, then - institute, graduate school, academic education,” says Yury Gulyaev, member of the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences, academician, director of the Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics. – When scientists began to leave the country in droves, and school graduates almost without exception began to prefer business to education and science, there was a terrible danger that there would be no one to pass on the knowledge of the older generation of scientists. Alferov found a way out and literally accomplished a feat by creating this kind of greenhouse for future scientists.”

On July 22, 2007, the “Letter of ten academicians” (“letter of ten” or “letter of academicians”) was published - an open letter from ten academicians of the Russian Academy of Sciences (E. Aleksandrova, Zh. Alferova, G. Abeleva, L. Barkov, A. Vorobyov, V Ginzburg, S. Inge-Vechtomov, E. Kruglyakov, M. Sadovsky, A. Cherepashchuk) "The policy of the ROC MP: consolidation or collapse of the country?" To the President of Russia V.V. Putin. The letter expressed concern about "the ever-increasing clericalization of Russian society, the active penetration of the church into all spheres of public life", in particular, into the public education system. “Believing or not believing in God is a matter of conscience and beliefs of an individual,” academicians write. – We respect the feelings of believers and do not aim to fight against religion. But we cannot remain indifferent when attempts are made to question scientific Knowledge, to eradicate the materialistic vision of the world from education, to replace the knowledge accumulated by science with faith. It should not be forgotten that the course of innovative development proclaimed by the state can be implemented only if schools and universities equip young people with the knowledge obtained by modern science. There is no alternative to this knowledge."

The letter caused a huge reaction throughout society. The Minister of Education stated: "The letter of the academicians played a positive role, as it caused a wide public discussion, a number of representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church are of the same opinion." On September 13, 2007, Russian President V.V. Putin said that the study of religious subjects in public schools should not be made mandatory, because this is contrary to the Russian constitution.

In February 2008, an open letter was published by representatives of the scientific community to the President of the Russian Federation in connection with plans to introduce the course "Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture" (EPC) in schools. By mid-April, more than 1,700 people signed the letter, of which more than 1,100 have academic degrees (candidates and doctors of science). The position of the signatories boils down to the following: the introduction of the OPK will inevitably lead to conflicts in schools on religious grounds; in order to realize the “cultural rights” of believers, it is necessary to use not general education, but Sunday schools already available in sufficient quantities; theology, or theology, is not a scientific discipline.

Since 2010 - co-chairman of the Advisory Scientific Council of the Skolkovo Foundation. The Skolkovo Innovation Center (Russian Silicon Valley) is a modern scientific and technological complex under construction for the development and commercialization of new technologies. The Skolkovo Foundation has five clusters corresponding to five areas of innovative technology development: the biomedical technology cluster, the energy efficiency technology cluster, the information and computer technology cluster, the space technology cluster, and the nuclear technology cluster.

Since 2011 - Deputy of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation of the 6th convocation from the Communist Party.

Established the Education and Science Support Fund to support talented young students, promote their professional growth, encourage creative activity in conducting scientific research in priority areas of science. The first contribution to the Fund was made by Zhores Alferov from the funds of the Nobel Prize.

In his book "Physics and Life" Zh.I. Alferov, in particular, writes: “Everything that has been created by mankind has been created thanks to science. And if our country is destined to be a great power, then it will be so not thanks to nuclear weapons or Western investments, not thanks to faith in God or the President, but thanks to the work of its people, faith in knowledge, in science, thanks to the preservation and development of scientific potential and education".

Zhores Alferov is, without exaggeration, the greatest living Soviet and Russian physicist, the only surviving Nobel Prize winner in physics living in Russia, the patriarch of parliamentary politics.

Family

Zhores Alferov grew up in the family of Belarusian Ivan Karpovich Alferov and Jewish woman Anna Vladimirovna Rosenblum. The elder brother Marx Ivanovich Alferov died at the front.

Zhores Alferov is married for the second time to Tamara Darskaya. From this marriage, Alferov has a son, Ivan. It is also known that Alferov has a daughter from his first marriage, with whom he does not maintain relations, and an adopted daughter, Irina, is the daughter of his second wife from his first marriage.

Biography

The beginning of the war did not allow young Zhores Alferov to study at school, and he continued his studies immediately after the end of the war in the destroyed Minsk, in the only working Russian male secondary school No. 42.

After graduating from school with a gold medal, Zhores Alferov went to Leningrad and without entrance exams was enrolled in the Faculty of Electronic Engineering Leningrad Electrotechnical Institute named after V.I. Ulyanova (LETI).

In 1950, student Zhores Alferov, who specialized in electrovacuum technology, began working in the vacuum laboratory of Professor B.P. Kozyrev.

In December 1952, during the distribution of students to his department at LETI, Zhores Alferov chose the Leningrad Institute of Physics and Technology (LFTI), which was led by the famous Abram Ioffe. At LPTI, Alferov became a junior researcher and took part in the development of the first domestic transistors.

In 1959, Zhores Alferov received his first government award, the Badge of Honor, for his work in the USSR Navy.

In 1961, Alferov defended a secret dissertation on the development and research of high-power germanium and silicon rectifiers, and received the degree of candidate of technical sciences.

In 1964, Zhores Alferov became a senior researcher Phystech.

In 1963, Alferov began studying semiconductor heterojunctions. In 1970, Alferov defended his doctoral dissertation, summarizing a new stage of research on heterojunctions in semiconductors. In fact, he created a new direction - the physics of heterostructures.

In 1971, Zhores Alferov was awarded his first international award, the Ballantyne Medal, established by the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. In 1972 Alferov became a laureate Lenin Prize.

In 1972, Alferov became a professor, and a year later - the head of the basic department of optoelectronics at LETI, opened at the Faculty of Electronic Engineering of the Phystech. In 1987, Alferov headed the Phystech, and in 1988, in parallel, he became the dean of the Faculty of Physics and Technology of the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute (LPI), which he opened.

In 1990, Alferov became vice-president of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

On October 10, 2000, it became known that Zhores Alferov became the laureate Nobel Prize in Physics- for the development of semiconductor heterostructures for high-speed and optoelectronics. He shared the prize itself with two other physicists, Kremer and Jack Kilby.

In 2001, Alferov became a laureate of the State Prize of the Russian Federation.

In 2003, Alferov left the post of head of the Phystech, remaining the scientific director of the institute. In 2005, he became chairman of the St. Petersburg Physics and Technology Scientific and Educational Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Zhores Alferov is a world-renowned scientist who created his own scientific school and trained hundreds of young scientists. Alferov is a member of a number of scientific organizations in the world.

Politics

Zhores Alferov since 1944 was a member Komsomol, and since 1965 - a member CPSU. Alferov entered politics in the late 1980s. From 1989 to 1992 Alferov was a People's Deputy of the USSR.

In 1995, Zhores Alferov was elected a deputy State Duma second convocation from the movement "Our home is Russia". In the State Duma, Alferov headed the subcommittee on science of the Committee on Science and Education of the State Duma.

Most of the time, Alferov was a member of the Our Home is Russia faction, but in April 1999 he joined the People's Power parliamentary group.

In 1999, Alferov was again elected to the State Duma of the third, and then in 2003 - and the fourth convocation, passing through party lists CPRF without being a party member. In the State Duma, Alferov continued to be a member of the parliamentary committee on education and science.

In 2001-2005, Alferov headed the presidential commission for the import of spent nuclear fuel.

In 2007, Alferov was elected to the State Duma of the fifth convocation from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, becoming the oldest deputy of the lower house. Since 2011, Alferov has been a member of the State Duma of the sixth convocation from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation.

Run for president in 2013 RAS and, having received 345 votes, took second place.

In April 2015, Zhores Alferov returned to the Public Council under Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation. Alferov left the post of chairman of the public council under the Ministry of Defense in March 2013.

The scientist said that the reason for leaving was disagreements with the minister Livanov on the role of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He explained that the minister spoke in a completely different way about the role and significance of the RAS". Also, the Nobel laureate believed that Livanov either did not understand the traditions of effective cooperation between the Russian Academy of Sciences and universities, or " deliberately trying to break science and education".

Income

According to the declaration of Zhores Alferov, in 2012 he earned 17,144,258.05 rubles. He owns two land plots of 12,500.00 sq. m, two apartments with an area of ​​216.30 sq. m, a cottage with an area of ​​165.80 sq. m and a garage.

Gossip

After the reform of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which began in 2013, Alferov was called its main opponent. At the same time, Alferov himself did not sign the statement of the scientists included in Club "July 1", his name is not under the Appeal of Russian scientists to the top leaders of the Russian Federation.

In July 2007, Zhores Alferov became one of the authors of the appeal of academicians of the Russian Academy of Sciences to the President of Russia Vladimir Putin, in which scientists opposed the "growing clericalization of Russian society": academicians opposed the introduction of the specialty "theology" and against the introduction of a compulsory school subject "Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture".

Born on March 15, 1930, Vitebsk

Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, elected on March 15, 1979. Vice-President of the USSR Academy of Sciences (then RAS) from April 25, 1990.

Laureate of the Lenin Prize (1972) and the State Prize of the USSR (1984). He was awarded the Ballantyne Gold Medal (1971) of the Franklin Institute (USA), the Hewlett-Packard Prize of the European Physical Society (1972), the H. Welker Medal (1987), the A.P. Karpinsky and A.F. Ioffe of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the National non-governmental Demidov Prize of the Russian Federation (1999), the Kyoto Prize for advanced achievements in the field of electronics (2001), the State Prize of the Russian Federation (2002), the Global Energy Prize (2005).

Winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics "for the development of semiconductor heterostructures for high-speed and optoelectronics".

Honorary doctor of many universities and honorary member of many foreign academies, including the Polish Academy of Sciences, the US National Academy of Sciences and the US National Academy of Sciences of Engineering, the National Academies of Sciences of Italy, China, Cuba, etc.

Chairman of the Presidium of the St. Petersburg Scientific Center.

Scientific director of the Physico-Technical Institute. A.F. Ioffe (in 1987–2003 - director).

Chairman-organizer of the St. Petersburg Physical-Technological Scientific and Educational Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Dean of the Faculty of Physics and Technology of St. Petersburg State Technical University.

Rector-organizer of the Academic University of Physics and Technology (AFTU RAS) - the first higher educational institution that is part of the RAS system (2002).

Initiator of the creation of the Global Energy Prize (established in 2002).

Founder (2001) and President of the Education and Science Support Foundation (Alferov Foundation).

Deputy of the State Duma, member of the State Duma Committee on Education and Science.

– 1978). And now - the success of Alferov.

True, even here it was not so much without a fly in the ointment, but not without a small psychological splinter: Zhores Ivanovich, paired with Herbert Kroemer, will share the prize of $ 1 million in half with Jack Kilby. By decision of the Nobel Committee, Alferov and Kilby were awarded the Nobel Prize (one for two) for "work on obtaining semiconductor structures that can be used for ultrafast computers." (It is curious that the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1958 also had to be divided between the Soviet physicists Pavel Cherenkov and Ilya Frank, and for 1964 between, again, the Soviet physicists Alexander Prokhorov and Nikolai Basov.) Another American, an employee of the corporation " Texas Instruments, Jack Kilby, awarded for his work in the field of integrated circuits.

So, who is he, the new Russian Nobel laureate?

Zhores Ivanovich Alferov was born in the Belarusian city of Vitebsk. After 1935 the family moved to the Urals. In the city of Turinsk, A. went to school from the fifth to the eighth grades. On May 9, 1945, his father, Ivan Karpovich Alferov, was assigned to Minsk, where A. graduated from the male secondary school No. 42 with a gold medal. He became a student of the Faculty of Electronic Engineering (FET) of the Leningrad Electrotechnical Institute (LETI) named after. IN AND. Ulyanov on the advice of the school teacher of physics, Yakov Borisovich Meltserzon.

In his third year, A. went to work in the vacuum laboratory of Professor B.P. Kozyrev. There he began experimental work under the guidance of Natalia Nikolaevna Sozina. From his student years, A. attracted other students to participate in scientific research. So, in 1950, semiconductors became the main business of his life.

In 1953, after graduating from LETI, A. was hired by the Physico-Technical Institute. A.F. Ioffe to the laboratory of V.M. Tuchkevich. In the first half of the 1950s, the institute was given the task of creating domestic semiconductor devices for implementation in the domestic industry. The laboratory was faced with the task of obtaining single crystals of pure germanium and creating planar diodes and triodes on its basis. With the participation of A. developed the first domestic transistors and germanium power devices. For the complex of work carried out in 1959, A. received the first government award, he defended his Ph.D. thesis, summing up the ten-year work.

After that, before Zh.I. Alferov raised the question of choosing a further direction of research. The accumulated experience allowed him to move on to developing his own theme. In those years, the idea of ​​using heterojunctions in semiconductor technology was put forward. The creation of perfect structures based on them could lead to a qualitative leap in physics and technology.

At that time, in many journal publications and at various scientific conferences, it was repeatedly said that there were no prospects for carrying out work in this direction, since. numerous attempts to implement devices based on heterojunctions did not lead to practical results. The reason for the failures lay in the difficulty of creating a transition close to ideal, identifying and obtaining the necessary heteropairs.

But this did not stop Zhores Ivanovich. He based his technological research on epitaxial methods, which make it possible to control such fundamental parameters of a semiconductor as the band gap, electron affinity, effective mass of current carriers, refractive index, etc. within a single single crystal.

GaAs and AlAs were suitable for an ideal heterojunction, but the latter oxidized almost instantly in air. So, it was necessary to choose another partner. And he was found right there, at the institute, in the laboratory headed by N.A. Goryunova. It turned out to be a ternary AIGaAs compound. This is how the GaAs/AIGaAs heteropair, now widely known in the world of microelectronics, was determined. Zh.I. Alferov and his collaborators not only created heterostructures in the AlAs-GaAs system that are close in their properties to an ideal model, but also the world's first semiconductor heterolaser operating in a continuous mode at room temperature.

Discovery of Zh.I. Alferov ideal heterojunctions and new physical phenomena - "superinjection", electronic and optical confinement in heterostructures - also made it possible to radically improve the parameters of most known semiconductor devices and create fundamentally new ones, especially promising for use in optical and quantum electronics. Zhores Ivanovich summarized the new stage of research on heterojunctions in semiconductors in his doctoral dissertation, which he successfully defended in 1970.

The works of Zh.I. Alferov were duly appreciated by international and domestic science. In 1971, the Franklin Institute (USA) awarded him the prestigious Ballantyne medal, called the "small Nobel Prize" and established to reward the best work in the field of physics. This is followed by the highest award of the USSR - the Lenin Prize (1972).

Using the developed by Zh.I. Alferov in the 70s of the technology of highly efficient, radiation-resistant solar cells based on AIGaAs / GaAs heterostructures in Russia (for the first time in the world) organized a large-scale production of heterostructural solar cells for space batteries. One of them, installed in 1986 on the Mir space station, worked in orbit for the entire period of operation without a significant decrease in power.

On the basis of those proposed in 1970 by Zh.I. Alferov and his collaborators of ideal transitions in multicomponent InGaAsP compounds have created semiconductor lasers operating in a much wider spectral region than lasers in the AIGaAs system. They have found wide application as radiation sources in long-distance fiber-optic communication lines.

In the early 90s, one of the main areas of work carried out under the leadership of Zh.I. Alferov, is getting and studying the properties of low-dimensional nanostructures: quantum wires and quantum dots.

In 1993...1994, for the first time in the world, heterolasers based on structures with quantum dots - "artificial atoms" were realized. In 1995 Zh.I. Alferov and his collaborators demonstrate for the first time an injection quantum dot heterolaser operating in a continuous mode at room temperature. It has become fundamentally important to expand the spectral range of lasers using quantum dots on GaAs substrates. Thus, the studies of Zh.I. Alferov laid the foundations for a fundamentally new electronics based on heterostructures with a very wide range of applications, known today as “zone engineering”.

The award has found a hero

In one of his numerous interviews (1984) to a correspondent's question: “According to rumors, you have now been nominated for the Nobel Prize. Isn't it a shame that you didn't get it? Zhores Ivanovich replied: “I heard that they had been introduced more than once. Practice shows that either it is given to a rhinestone after opening (in my case, this is the mid-70s), or already in old age. So it was with P.L. Kapitsa. So, I still have everything ahead of me.”

Here Zhores Ivanovich made a mistake. As they say, the award found the hero before the onset of old age. On October 10, 2000, all Russian television programs announced the award of Zh.I. Alferov Nobel Prize in Physics for 2000.

Modern information systems must meet two simple but fundamental requirements: to be fast so that a large amount of information can be transferred in a short period of time, and compact to fit in the office, at home, in a briefcase or pocket.

With their discoveries, the 2000 Nobel Laureates in Physics created the basis for such modern technology. Zhores I. Alferov and Herbert Kremer discovered and developed fast opto- and microelectronic components, which are created on the basis of multilayer semiconductor heterostructures.

Heterolasers transmit and heteroreceivers receive information streams via fiber-optic communication lines. Heterolasers can also be found in CD players, label decoders, laser pointers, and many other devices.

Based on heterostructures, high-power, high-performance light-emitting diodes have been created that are used in displays, brake lights in cars, and traffic lights. In heterostructural solar batteries, which are widely used in space and ground energy, record-breaking efficiency of converting solar energy into electrical energy has been achieved.

Jack Kilby was awarded for his contribution to the discovery and development of integrated circuits, thanks to which microelectronics began to develop rapidly, which, along with optoelectronics, is the basis of all modern technology.

Teacher, educate a student...

In 1973, A., with the support of the rector of LETI A.A. Vavilov, organized the basic department of optoelectronics (EO) at the Faculty of Electronic Engineering of the Physico-Technical Institute. A.F. Ioffe.

In an incredibly short time Zh.I. Alferov is ashamed of B.P. Zakharchenei and other scientists of the Physicotechnical Institute developed a curriculum for the training of engineers in the new department. It provided for the training of first- and second-year students within the walls of LETI, since the level of physical and mathematical training at FET was high and created a good foundation for studying special disciplines, which, starting from the third year, were taught by Phystech scientists on its territory. In the same place, using the latest technological and analytical equipment, laboratory workshops were carried out, as well as course and diploma projects under the guidance of teachers of the basic department.

Admission of students for the first year in the amount of 25 people was carried out through entrance examinations, and the recruitment of groups for the second and third courses for study at the Department of OE took place from students who studied at the Faculty of Economics and at the Department of Dielectrics and Semiconductors of the Faculty of Electrophysics. The commission for the selection of students was headed by Zhores Ivanovich. Of the approximately 250 students enrolled in each course, 25 of the best were selected. On September 15, 1973, classes began for students of the second and third courses. For this, an excellent teaching staff was selected.

Zh.I. Alferov paid and continues to pay great attention to the formation of a contingent of first-year students. On his initiative, in the first years of the department's work, annual schools "Physics and Life" were held during the spring school holidays. Its listeners were students of the graduating classes of schools in Leningrad. On the recommendation of teachers of physics and mathematics, the most gifted students were invited to take part in the work of this school. Thus, a group of 30 ... 40 people was recruited. They were housed in the institute's pioneer camp "Star". All expenses related to accommodation, meals and services for schoolchildren were covered by our university.

All of its lecturers, led by Zh.I. Alferov. Everything was solemn and very homely. Zhores Ivanovich gave the first lecture. He spoke so fascinatingly about physics, electronics, heterostructures that everyone listened to him as if spellbound. But even after the lecture, communication between Zh.I. Alferova with the guys. Surrounded by them, he walked around the camp, played snowballs, fooled around. How informally he treated this "event" is evidenced by the fact that on these trips Zhores Ivanovich took his wife Tamara Georgievna and son Vanya ...

The results of the work of the school were not slow to tell. In 1977, the first graduation of engineers in the department of OE took place, the number of graduates who received honors degrees at the faculty doubled. One group of students of this department gave as many "red" diplomas as the other seven groups.

In 1988, Zh.I. Alferov organized the Faculty of Physics and Technology at the Polytechnic Institute.

The next logical step was to combine these structures under one roof. To implement this idea Zh.I. Alferov started in the early 90s. At the same time, he did not just build the building of the Scientific and Educational Center, he laid the foundation for the future revival of the country ... And on September 1, 1999, the building of the Scientific and Educational Center (REC) went into operation.

On that stands and will stand the Russian land ...

Alferov always remains himself. In dealing with ministers and students, directors of enterprises and ordinary people, he is equally equal. It does not adapt to the first, does not rise above the second, but always defends its point of view with conviction.

Zh.I. Alferov is always busy. His work schedule is scheduled a month in advance, and the weekly work cycle is as follows: Monday morning - Phystech (he is its director), the afternoon - St. Petersburg Scientific Center (he is chairman); Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday - Moscow (he is a member of the State Duma and vice-president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, besides, numerous issues need to be resolved in the ministries) or St. Petersburg (also issues above their heads); Friday morning - Phystech, afternoon - Research and Education Center (Director). These are only major touches, and between them - scientific work, leadership of the Department of OE at ETU and the Faculty of Physics and Technology at TU, lecturing, participation in conferences. Do not count everything!

Our laureate is an excellent lecturer and storyteller. It is no coincidence that all the news agencies of the world noted Alferov's Nobel lecture, which he read in English without an outline and with its inherent brilliance.

When presenting the Nobel Prizes, there is a tradition when at the banquet, which is arranged by the King of Sweden in honor of the Nobel Laureates (at which there are over a thousand guests), only one laureate from each "nomination" is given the floor. In 2000, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three people: Zh.I. Alferov, Herbert Kremer and Jack Kilby. So the last two persuaded Zhores Ivanovich to speak at this banquet. And he fulfilled this request brilliantly, successfully beating our Russian habit of doing “one favorite thing” for three in his word.

In his book "Physics and Life" Zh.I. Alferov, in particular, writes: “Everything that has been created by mankind has been created thanks to science. And if our country is destined to be a great power, then it will be so not thanks to nuclear weapons or Western investments, not thanks to faith in God or the President, but thanks to the work of its people, faith in knowledge, in science, thanks to the preservation and development of scientific potential and education.

As a ten-year-old boy, I read a wonderful book by Veniamin Kaverin "Two Captains". And all my subsequent life I followed the principle of its protagonist Sanya Grigoriev: "Fight and seek, find and not give up." True, it is very important to understand what you are doing.”

Born March 15, 1930 in Vitebsk in the family of Ivan Karpovich and Anna Vladimirovna Alferov, natives of Belarus. The father of an eighteen-year-old boy came to St. Petersburg in 1912. He worked as a loader in the port, a laborer at an envelope factory, a worker at the Lessner plant (later the Karl Marx Plant). In World War I, he rose to the rank of non-commissioned officer of the Life Guards, becoming a Knight of St. George.

In September 1917, I.K. Alferov joined the Bolshevik Party and remained faithful to the ideals chosen in his youth for the rest of his life. This, in particular, is evidenced by the bitter words of Zhores Ivanovich himself: “I am happy that my parents did not live to see this time” (1994). During the Civil War, I.K. Alferov commanded a cavalry regiment of the Red Army, met with V.I. Lenin, L.D. Trotsky, B.B. Dumenko. After graduating from the Industrial Academy in 1935, he went from factory director to head of the trust: Stalingrad, Novosibirsk, Barnaul, Syasstroy (near Leningrad), Turinsk (Sverdlovsk region, war years), Minsk (after the war). Ivan Karpovich was characterized by internal decency and intolerance to indiscriminate condemnation of people.

Anna Vladimirovna had a clear mind and great worldly wisdom, largely inherited by her son. She worked in the library, headed the council of social women.

Zh.I. Alferov with his parents, Anna Vladimirovna and Ivan Karpovich (1954).

The couple, like most people of that generation, firmly believed in revolutionary ideas. Then there was a fashion to give children sonorous revolutionary names. The younger son became Zhores in honor of the French revolutionary Jean Zhores, and the eldest son became Marx, in honor of the founder of scientific communism. Zhores and Marx were director's children, which means that it was necessary to be an example both in studies and in public life.

The Moloch of repression bypassed the Alferov family, but the war took its toll. Marks Alferov finished school on June 21, 1941 in Syasstroy. He entered the Ural Industrial Institute at the Faculty of Energy, but studied for only a few weeks, and then decided that it was his duty to defend the Motherland. Stalingrad, Kharkov, Kursk Bulge, severe head wound. In October 1943, he spent three days with his family in Sverdlovsk, when he returned to the front after the hospital. And these three days, front-line stories of his older brother, his passionate youthful faith in the power of science and engineering, Zhores remembered for a lifetime. Guards junior lieutenant Marks Ivanovich Alferov died in battle in the “second Stalingrad” - that was the name of the Korsun-Shevchenko operation then.

In 1956 Zhores came to Ukraine to find his brother's grave. In Kyiv, on the street, he unexpectedly met his colleague B.P. Zakharchenya, who later became one of his closest friends. We agreed to go together. We bought tickets for the boat and the very next day we were sailing down the Dnieper to Kanev in a double cabin. We found the village of Khilki, near which Marx Alferov furiously repelled an attempt by selected German divisions to get out of the Korsun-Shevchenko "boiler". They found a mass grave with a white plaster soldier on a pedestal, rising above the lushly overgrown grass, in which simple flowers were interspersed, which are usually planted on Russian graves: marigolds, pansies, forget-me-nots.

In the destroyed Minsk, Zhores studied at the only at that time Russian male secondary school No. 42, where there was a wonderful physics teacher - Yakov Borisovich Meltserzon. There was no physics room at school, but Yakov Borisovich, who was in love with physics, knew how to convey to his students his attitude to his favorite subject, so they never played naughty in a rather hooligan class. Zhores, amazed by the story of Yakov Borisovich about the operation of a cathode oscilloscope and the principles of radar, went in 1947 to study in Leningrad, at the Electrotechnical Institute, although his gold medal opened up the possibility of entering any institute without exams. Leningrad Electrotechnical Institute (LETI) im. V.I.Ulyanov (Lenin) was an institution with a unique name: it mentions both the real name and the party nickname of a person whom part of the population of the former USSR does not really respect now (now it is St. Petersburg State Electrotechnical University).

The foundation of science at LETI, which played an outstanding role in the development of domestic electronics and radio engineering, was laid by such "whales" as Alexander Popov, Heinrich Graftio, Axel Berg, Mikhail Shatelen. Zhores Ivanovich, according to him, was very lucky with the first supervisor. In the third year, considering that mathematics and theoretical disciplines are easy, and "hands" need to learn a lot, he went to work in the vacuum laboratory of Professor B.P. Kozyrev. There, starting in 1950 experimental work under the guidance of Natalia Nikolaevna Sozina, who had recently defended her dissertation on the study of semiconductor photodetectors in the IR region of the spectrum, Zh.I. Alferov first encountered semiconductors, which became the main business of his life. The first monograph on the physics of semiconductors studied was the book by F.F. In December 1952, distribution took place. Zh.I. Alferov dreamed of the Fiztekh, headed by Abram Fedorovich Ioffe, whose monograph "Basic Concepts of Modern Physics" became a reference book for the young scientist. During the distribution, there were three vacancies, and one went to Zh.I. Alferov. Zhores Ivanovich wrote much later that his happy life in science was predetermined precisely by this distribution. In a letter to his parents in Minsk, he told about the great happiness that fell to him to work at the Ioffe Institute. Zhores did not yet know that two months earlier Abram Fedorovich was forced to leave the institute he had created, where he had been director for more than 30 years.

Systematic studies of semiconductors at the Physico-Technical Institute began as early as the 1930s. last century. In 1932 V.P.Zhuze and B.V.Kurchatov investigated intrinsic and impurity conductivity of semiconductors. In the same year, A.F. Ioffe and Ya.I. Frenkel created a theory of current rectification at a metal-semiconductor contact, based on the phenomenon of tunneling. In 1931 and 1936 Ya.I. Frenkel published his famous works, in which he predicted the existence of excitons in semiconductors, introducing this term itself and developing the theory of excitons. First diffusion theory of rectifier p–n-transition, which became the basis of the theory p–n-transition by V. Shockley, was published by B.I. Davydov in 1939. At the initiative of A.F. At the Physicotechnical Institute, studies of intermetallic compounds began.

On January 30, 1953, Zh.I. Alferov started working with a new supervisor, at that time the head of the sector, candidate of physical and mathematical sciences Vladimir Maksimovich Tuchkevich. A very important task was set before a small team of the sector: the creation of the first domestic germanium diodes and transistors with p–n junctions (see "Physics" No. 40/2000, V.V. Randoshkin. Transistor). The theme "Plane" was entrusted by the government in parallel to four institutes: FIAN and FTI at the Academy of Sciences, TsNII-108 - the main radar institute of the Ministry of Defense in Moscow at that time (headed by Academician A.I. Berg) - and NII-17 - the head Institute of Electronic Technology in Fryazino, near Moscow.

Phystech in 1953, by today's standards, was a small institute. Zh.I. Alferov received a pass number 429 (which meant the number of all employees of the institute at that time). Then most of the famous physics and technology specialists went to Moscow to I.V. Kurchatov and to other newly created "atomic" centers. The "semiconductor elite" went with A.F. Ioffe to the newly organized semiconductor laboratory at the presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Only D.N. Nasledov, B.T. Kolomiets and V.M. Tuchkevich remained at the FTI from the “older” generation of “semiconductors”.

The new director of the LPTI, academician A.P. Komar, did not behave in the best way towards his predecessor, but he chose a completely reasonable strategy in the development of the institute. The main attention was paid to the support of works on the creation of a qualitatively new semiconductor electronics, space research (high-velocity gas dynamics and high-temperature coatings - Yu.A. Dunaev) and the development of methods for the separation of light isotopes for hydrogen weapons (B.P. Konstantinov). Purely fundamental research was not forgotten either: it was at this time that the exciton was experimentally discovered (E.F. Gross), the foundations of the kinetic theory of strength were created (S.N. Zhurkov), work began on the physics of atomic collisions (V.M. Dukelsky, K. .V. Fedorenko). A brilliant report by E.F. Gross on the discovery of the exciton was made at the first semiconductor seminar for Zh.I. Alferov at the Physicotechnical Institute in February 1953. their first steps.

The directorate of the Institute of Physics and Technology was well aware of the need to attract young people to science, and each incoming young specialist was interviewed by the directorate. It was at this time that the future members of the USSR Academy of Sciences B.P. Zakharchenya, A.A. Kaplinsky, E.P. Mazets, V.V.

At Phystech, Zh.I. Alferov very quickly supplemented his engineering and technical education with a physical education and became a highly qualified specialist in quantum physics of semiconductor devices. The main thing was the work in the laboratory - Alferov was lucky to be a participant in the birth of Soviet semiconductor electronics. Zhores Ivanovich, as a relic, keeps his laboratory journal of that time with a record of the creation by him on March 5, 1953 of the first Soviet transistor with p–n-transition. Today one can be surprised how a very small team of very young employees under the leadership of V.M. Tuchkevich developed the basics of technology and metrology of transistor electronics within a few months: A.A. transistors with parameters at the level of the best world samples; In this work, to which the team devoted itself with all the passion of youth and consciousness of the highest responsibility to the country, the formation of a young scientist proceeded very quickly and effectively, understanding the significance of technology not only for the creation of new electronic devices, but also for physical research, the role and significance of "small" , at first glance, the details in the experiment, the need to understand the "simple" foundations before putting forward "highly scientific" explanations for unsuccessful results.

Already in May 1953, the first Soviet transistor receivers were demonstrated to the "high authorities", and in October a government commission accepted the work in Moscow. Physicotechnical Institute, Lebedev Physical Institute and TsNII-108, using different methods of designing and manufacturing technologies for transistors, successfully solved the problem, and only NII-17, blindly copying well-known American samples, failed the work. True, the first semiconductor institute in the country, NII-35, created on the basis of one of his laboratories, was entrusted with the development of industrial technology for transistors and diodes with p–n-transitions, with which they successfully coped.

In subsequent years, the small team of "semiconductors" of the PTI noticeably expanded, and in a very short time, the first Soviet germanium power rectifiers, germanium photodiodes and silicon solar cells were created in the laboratory of the doctor of physical and mathematical sciences, professor V.M. Tuchkevich, the behavior of impurities in germanium and silicon.

In May 1958, Zh.I. Alferov was approached by Anatoly Petrovich Alexandrov, the future president of the USSR Academy of Sciences, with a request to develop semiconductor devices for the first Soviet nuclear submarine. To solve this problem, fundamentally new technology and design of germanium valves were needed. The Deputy Chairman of the Government of the USSR Dmitry Fyodorovich Ustinov personally (!) called the junior researcher. I had to settle directly in the laboratory for two months, and the work was successfully completed in record time: already in October 1958, the devices were on the submarine. For Zhores Ivanovich, even today, the first order received in 1959 for this work is one of the most valuable awards!

Zh.I. Alferov after the presentation of the government award for work commissioned by the USSR Navy

The installation of valves was associated with numerous trips to Severodvinsk. When the Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Navy came to the “acceptance of the topic” and was informed that new germanium valves were now on the submarines, the admiral frowned and asked irritably: “Well, there weren’t any domestic ones?”

In Kirovo-Chepetsk, where the efforts of many employees of the Physicotechnical Institute were working on the separation of lithium isotopes in order to create a hydrogen bomb, Zhores met many remarkable people and vividly described them. B. Zakharchenya remembered such a story about Boris Petrovich Zverev - the bison of the "defense industry" of Stalin's times, the chief engineer of the plant. During the war, in its most difficult time, he led an enterprise engaged in the electrolytic production of aluminum. In the technological process, molasses was used, which was stored in a huge vat right in the workshop. Hungry workers plundered it. Boris Petrovich called the workers to a meeting, made a heartfelt speech, then climbed the stairs to the upper edge of the vat, unbuttoned his trousers and urinated in front of everyone into a vat of molasses. This did not affect the technology, but no one was stealing molasses. Zhores was greatly amused by this purely Russian solution of the problem.

For successful work, Zh.I. Alferov was regularly encouraged by cash prizes, and soon received the title of senior researcher. In 1961, he defended his Ph.D. thesis, devoted mainly to the development and research of high-power germanium and partly silicon rectifiers. Note that in these devices, as in all previously created semiconductor devices, unique physical properties were used p–n-transition - an artificially created impurity distribution in a semiconductor single crystal, in which in one part of the crystal the charge carriers are negatively charged electrons, and in the other - positively charged quasiparticles, "holes" (Latin n And p just mean negative And positive). Since only the type of conductivity differs, and the substance is the same, p–n- the transition can be called homotransition.

Thanks to p–n-transition in crystals succeeded in injecting electrons and holes, and a simple combination of two p–n-transitions made it possible to implement single-crystal amplifiers with good parameters - transistors. The structures with one p–n-transition (diodes and photocells), two p–n-transitions (transistors) and three p–n-transitions (thyristors). All further development of semiconductor electronics went along the path of studying single-crystal structures based on germanium, silicon, semiconductor compounds of the type A III B V (elements III and V of groups of the Periodic Table of Mendeleev). The improvement of the properties of devices proceeded mainly along the path of improving the methods of forming p–n transitions and use of new materials. Replacing germanium with silicon made it possible to raise the operating temperature of devices and create high-voltage diodes and thyristors. Advances in the technology of obtaining gallium arsenide and other optical semiconductors have led to the creation of semiconductor lasers, high-performance light sources and photocells. Combinations of diodes and transistors on a single single-crystal silicon substrate became the basis of integrated circuits, on which the development of electronic computers was based. Miniature, and then microelectronic devices, created mainly on crystalline silicon, literally swept away vacuum tubes, making it possible to reduce the size of devices by hundreds and thousands of times. Suffice it to recall the old computers, which occupied huge premises, and their modern equivalent, a laptop - a computer that resembles a small attaché case, or "diplomat", as it is called in Russia.

But the enterprising, lively mind of Zh.I. Alferov was looking for his way in science. And he was found, despite the extremely difficult life situation. After a lightning-fast first marriage, he had to divorce just as quickly, losing his apartment. As a result of scandals arranged by a ferocious mother-in-law in the party committee of the institute, Zhores settled in the basement room of an old Fiztekhov house.

One of the conclusions of the Ph.D. thesis was that p–n-transition in a semiconductor homogeneous in composition ( homostructure) cannot provide optimal parameters for many devices. It became clear that further progress is connected with the creation p–n- transition at the boundary of semiconductors with different chemical composition ( heterostructures).

In this regard, immediately after the appearance of the first work, which described the operation of a semiconductor laser on a homostructure in gallium arsenide, Zh.I. Alferov put forward the idea of ​​using heterostructures. The filed application for the issuance of a copyright certificate for this invention, according to the laws of that time, was classified. Only after the publication of a similar idea by G. Kremer in the United States, the secrecy was reduced to the level of "confidential use", but the author's certificate was published only many years later.

Homojunction lasers were inefficient due to high optical and electrical losses. The threshold currents were very high, and generation was carried out only at low temperatures. In his article, G.Kroemer proposed to use double heterostructures for the spatial limitation of carriers in the active region. He suggested that "using a pair of heterojunction injectors, lasing can be implemented in many indirect-gap semiconductors and improved in direct-gap ones." In the author's certificate of Zh.I. Alferov, the possibility of obtaining a high density of injected carriers and inverse population using "double" injection was also noted. It was pointed out that homojunction lasers can provide "continuous generation at high temperatures", besides, it is possible "to increase the radiating surface and use new materials to produce radiation in various regions of the spectrum."

Initially, the theory developed much faster than the practical implementation of devices. In 1966, Zh.I. Alferov formulated the general principles for controlling electronic and light fluxes in heterostructures. To avoid classification, only rectifiers were mentioned in the title of the article, although the same principles applied to semiconductor lasers. He predicted that the density of injected carriers could be many orders of magnitude higher (the "superinjection" effect).

The idea of ​​using a heterojunction was put forward at the dawn of the development of electronics. Already in the first patent related to transistors on p–n-transition, W. Shockley proposed to use a wide-gap emitter to obtain one-sided injection. Important theoretical results at an early stage in the study of heterostructures were obtained by H. Kroemer, who introduced the concepts of quasi-electric and quasi-magnetic fields in a smooth heterojunction and assumed an extremely high injection efficiency of heterojunctions compared to homojunctions. At the same time, various proposals for the use of heterojunctions in solar cells appeared.

So, the implementation of a heterojunction opened up the possibility of creating more efficient devices for electronics and reducing the size of devices literally to atomic scales. However, Zh.I. Alferov was dissuaded from engaging in heterojunctions by many, including V.M. Tuchkevich, who later repeatedly recalled this in speeches and toasts, emphasizing the courage of Zhores Ivanovich and the gift to foresee the development of spiders. At that time, there was general skepticism about the creation of an "ideal" heterojunction, especially with theoretically predictable injection properties. And in the pioneering work of R.L. Andersen on the study of epitaxial ([taxis] means arrangement in order, building) of the Ge–GaAs transition with coinciding lattice constants, there was no evidence of the injection of nonequilibrium carriers in heterostructures.

The maximum effect was expected when using heterojunctions between the semiconductor serving as the active region of the device and a wider-gap semiconductor. At that time, GaP–GaAs and AlAs–GaAs systems were considered as the most promising. For "compatibility", these materials first of all had to satisfy the most important condition: to have close values ​​of the crystal lattice constant.

The fact is that numerous attempts to implement a heterojunction were unsuccessful: after all, not only the sizes of the elementary cells of the crystal lattices of semiconductors that make up the junction should practically coincide, but their thermal, electrical, crystal chemical properties should also be close, as well as their crystal and band structures.

Such a heteropair could not be found. And Zh.I. Alferov undertook this seemingly hopeless case. The desired heterojunction, as it turned out, could be formed by epitaxial growth, when one single crystal (or rather, its single-crystal film) was grown on the surface of another single crystal literally layer by layer - one single-crystal layer after another. To our time, many methods of such cultivation have been developed. These are the very high technologies that ensure not only the prosperity of electronic companies, but also the comfortable existence of entire countries.

B.P. Zakharchenya recalled that the small working room of Zh.I. Alferov was all littered with rolls of graph paper, on which the tireless Zhores Ivanovich drew composition-property diagrams of multiphase semiconductor compounds from morning to evening in search of conjugated crystal lattices. Gallium arsenide (GaAs) and aluminum arsenide (AlAs) were suitable for the ideal heterojunction, but the latter oxidized instantly in air, and its use seemed out of the question. However, nature is generous with unexpected gifts, you just need to pick up the keys to its pantries, and not engage in rough hacking, which was called for by the slogan "We cannot wait for favors from nature, it is our task to take them from her." Such keys have already been picked up by Nina Alexandrovna Goryunova, a remarkable specialist in semiconductor chemistry, a physicist at the Physicotechnical Institute, who presented the world with the famous A III B V compounds. She also worked on more complex triple compounds. Zhores Ivanovich always treated Nina Aleksandrovna's talent with great reverence and immediately understood her outstanding role in science.

Initially, an attempt was made to create a GaP 0.15 As 0.85 –GaAs double heterostructure. And it was grown by vapor phase epitaxy, and a laser was formed on it. However, due to a slight discrepancy between the lattice constants, it, like homojunction lasers, could only operate at liquid nitrogen temperature. It became clear to Zh.I. Alferov that it would not be possible to realize the potential advantages of double heterostructures in this way.

One of Goryunova's students, Dmitry Tretyakov, a talented scientist with a bohemian soul in her unique Russian version, worked directly with Zhores Ivanovich. The author of hundreds of papers, who educated many candidates and doctors of sciences, the winner of the Lenin Prize - the highest recognition of creative merit at that time - did not defend any dissertation. He informed Zhores Ivanovich that aluminum arsenide, which is unstable in itself, is absolutely stable in the ternary compound AlGaAs, the so-called solid solution. This was evidenced by the crystals of this solid solution grown by cooling from the melt by Alexander Borshchevsky, also a student of N.A. Goryunova, and kept in his table for several years. Approximately in this way, in 1967, the GaAs–AlGaAs heteropair, which has now become a classic in the world of microelectronics, was found.

The study of phase diagrams, growth kinetics in this system, as well as the creation of a modified liquid-phase epitaxy method suitable for growing heterostructures soon led to the creation of a heterostructure matched in terms of the crystal lattice parameter. Zh.I. Alferov recalled: “When we published the first work on this topic, we were happy to consider ourselves the first to discover a unique, in fact ideal, lattice-matched system for GaAs.” However, almost simultaneously (with a delay of a month!) and independently, the Al x Ga 1– x As-GaAs was obtained in the USA by employees of the company IBM.

Since then, the realization of the main advantages of heterostructures has gone rapidly. First of all, the unique injection properties of wide-gap emitters and the superinjection effect were experimentally confirmed, stimulated emission in double heterostructures was demonstrated, and the band structure of the Al heterojunction was established. x Ga 1– x As, the luminescent properties and diffusion of carriers in a smooth heterojunction, as well as extremely interesting features of the current flow through the heterojunction, for example, diagonal tunneling-recombination transitions directly between holes from the narrow-gap and electrons from the wide-gap components of the heterojunction, have been carefully studied.

At the same time, the main advantages of heterostructures were realized by the group of Zh.I. Alferov:

– in low-threshold lasers based on double heterostructures operating at room temperature;

– in high-performance LEDs based on single and double heterostructures;

– in solar cells based on heterostructures;

– in bipolar transistors based on heterostructures;

- in thyristor p–n–p–n heterostructures.

If the ability to control the type of semiconductor conductivity by doping with various impurities and the idea of ​​injecting nonequilibrium charge carriers were the seeds from which semiconductor electronics grew, then heterostructures made it possible to solve a much more general problem of controlling the fundamental parameters of semiconductor crystals and devices, such as the band gap , effective masses of charge carriers and their mobility, refractive index, electronic energy spectrum, etc.

The idea of ​​semiconductor lasers on p–n-transition, experimental observation of effective radiative recombination in p–n- GaAs-based structure with the possibility of stimulated emission and the creation of lasers and light-emitting diodes on p–n-junctions were the grains from which semiconductor optoelectronics began to grow.

In 1967, Zhores Ivanovich was elected head of the department of the Physicotechnical Institute. At the same time, for the first time, he went on a short scientific trip to England, where only theoretical aspects of the physics of heterostructures were discussed, since the British colleagues considered experimental studies unpromising. Although the splendidly equipped laboratories had every opportunity for experimental research, the British did not even think about what they could do. Zhores Ivanovich, with a clear conscience, spent time getting acquainted with the architectural and artistic monuments in London. It was impossible to return without wedding gifts, so I had to visit the "museums of material culture" - luxurious compared to Soviet Western stores.

The bride was Tamara Darskaya, daughter of the actor of the Voronezh Musical Comedy Theater Georgy Darsky. She worked in Khimki near Moscow in the space company of Academician VPGlushko. The wedding took place in the restaurant "Roof" in the hotel "European" - at that time it was quite affordable for a candidate of sciences. The family budget also allowed weekly flights on the Leningrad-Moscow route and back (even a student on a scholarship could fly a Tu-104 once or twice a month, since a ticket cost only 11 rubles at the then official rate of 65 kopecks per dollar). Six months later, the couple nevertheless decided that it was better for Tamara Georgievna to move to Leningrad.

And already in 1968, on one of the floors of the "polymer" building of the Physicotechnical Institute, where V.M. Tuchkevich's laboratory was located in those years, the world's first heterolaser was "generated". After that, Zh.I. Alferov said to B.P. Zakharchene: “Borya, I am heterojunction of all semiconductor microelectronics!” In 1968–1969 Zh.I. Alferov's group practically implemented all the main ideas of controlling electronic and light fluxes in classical heterostructures based on the GaAs–AlAs system and showed the advantages of heterostructures in semiconductor devices (lasers, LEDs, solar batteries and transistors). Of course, the most important was the creation of low-threshold lasers operating at room temperature on a double heterostructure, proposed by Zh.I. Alferov back in 1963. American competitors (M.B. Panish and I. Hayashi from Bell Telephone, G.Kressel from RCA), who were aware of the potential advantages of double heterostructures, did not dare to implement them and used homostructures in lasers. Since 1968, a very tough competition really began, primarily with three laboratories of well-known American companies: Bell Telephone, IBM And RCA.

The report of Zh.I. Alferov at the International Conference on Luminescence in Newark (USA) in August 1969, in which the parameters of low-threshold lasers operating at room temperature on double heterostructures, made an impression of an exploding bomb on the American colleagues. Professor Ya. Pankov from RCA, just half an hour before the report, informed Zhores Ivanovich that, unfortunately, there was no permission for his visit to the firm, immediately after the report he discovered that it had been received. Zh.I. Alferov did not deny himself the pleasure of answering that now he has no time, since IBM And Bell Telephone have already been invited to visit their laboratories even before the report. After that, as I. Hayashi wrote, in Bell Telephone redoubled efforts to develop lasers based on double heterostructures.

Seminar in Bell Telephone, inspection of laboratories and discussion (and the American colleagues obviously did not hide, counting on reciprocity, technological details, structures and devices) quite clearly showed the advantages and disadvantages of the LPTI developments. The soon-to-be-ensued rivalry to achieve continuous operation of lasers at room temperature was at the time a rare example of open competition between laboratories from two antagonistic great powers. Zh.I.Alferov with his collaborators won this competition, being a month ahead of the group of M.Panisha from Bell Telephone!

In 1970, Zh.I. Alferov and his colleagues Efim Portnoy, Dmitry Tretyakov, Dmitry Garbuzov, Vyacheslav Andreev, Vladimir Korolkov created the first semiconductor heterolaser operating in a continuous mode at room temperature. Regardless of the cw lasing regime in lasers based on double heterostructures (with a diamond heat sink), Itsuo Hayashi and Morton Panish reported in an article sent to press only a month later. CW lasing at Phystech was implemented in lasers with stripe geometry, which were created using photolithography, with the lasers mounted on silver-coated copper heat sinks. The lowest threshold current density at room temperature was 940 A/cm 2 for wide lasers and 2.7 kA/cm 2 for stripe lasers. The implementation of such a generation mode caused an explosion of interest. At the beginning of 1971, many universities and industrial laboratories in the USA, USSR, Great Britain, Japan, Brazil and Poland began to study heterostructures and devices based on them.

A great contribution to the understanding of electronic processes in heterolasers was made by the theorist Rudolf Kazarinov. The generation time of the first laser was short. Zhores Ivanovich admitted that he was just long enough to measure the parameters necessary for the article. Extending the service life of lasers was a rather difficult matter, but it was successfully solved by the efforts of physicists and technologists. Now the owners of CD players are mostly unaware that sound and video information is read by a semiconductor heterolaser. Such lasers are used in many optoelectronic devices, but primarily in fiber-optic communication devices and various telecommunication systems. It is difficult to imagine our life without heterostructural light-emitting diodes and bipolar transistors, without low noise transistors with high electron mobility for high-frequency applications, including, in particular, satellite television systems. Following the heterojunction laser, many other devices were created, up to solar energy converters.

The importance of obtaining a continuous mode of operation of lasers on double heterojunctions at room temperature is primarily due to the fact that an optical fiber with low losses was created at the same time. This led to the birth and rapid development of fiber-optic communication systems. In 1971, these works were marked by the award of the first international award to Zh.I. Alferov - the Ballantyne Gold Medal of the Franklin Institute in the USA. The special value of this medal, as noted by Zhores Ivanovich, lies in the fact that the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia also awarded medals to other Soviet scientists: in 1944 to Academician P.L. Kapitsa, in 1974 to Academician N.N. 1981 to Academician A.D. Sakharov. It is a great honor to be in such a company.

The awarding of the Ballantyne medal to Zhores Ivanovich has a backstory associated with his friend. One of the first physicists in 1963 came to the USA B.P. Zakharchenya. He flew around almost all of America, met with such luminaries as Richard Feynman, Karl Anderson, Leo Szilard, John Bardeen, William Fairbank, Arthur Shavlov. At the University of Illinois, B.P. Zakharchenya met Nick Holonyak, the creator of the first efficient LED based on gallium arsenide-phosphide, which emits light in the visible region of the spectrum. Nick Holonyak is one of the greatest American scientists, a student of John Bardeen, the world's only two-time Nobel Prize winner in the same specialty (physics). He recently received an award as one of the founders of a new direction in science and technology - optoelectronics.

Nick Holonyak was born in the United States, where his father, a simple miner, emigrated from Galicia before the October Revolution. He brilliantly graduated from the University of Illinois, and his name is inscribed in golden letters on a special "Honor Board" of this university. B.P. Zakharchenya recalled: “A snow-white shirt, a bow tie, a short haircut in the fashion of the 60s and, finally, a sports figure (he lifted the barbell) made him a typical American. This impression was further strengthened when Nick spoke in his native American language. But suddenly he switched to the language of his father, and there was nothing left of the American gentleman. It was not Russian, but an amazing mixture of Russian and Rusyn (close to Ukrainian), flavored with salty miner jokes and strong peasant expressions learned from parents. At the same time, Professor Holonyak laughed very contagiously, turning into a mischievous Rusyn guy before our eyes.

Back in 1963, showing B.P. Zakharchene under a microscope a miniature LED that shone brightly green, Professor Holonyak said: “Look, Boris, at my light. Nex Time tell me there at your institute, maybe someone who wants to come here to Illinois from your lads. I will teach him how to be svetla.”

From left to right: Zh.I.Alferov, John Bardeen, V.M.Tuchkevich, Nick Holonyak (University of Illinois, Urbana, 1974)

Seven years later, Zhores Alferov came to Nick Holonyak's laboratory (being already familiar with him, in 1967 Holonyak visited Alferov's laboratory at the Physicotechnical Institute). Zhores Ivanovich was not the kind of "lad" who needed to learn to "robyt light." I could teach myself. His visit was very successful: at that time the Franklin Institute was just awarding another Ballantyne medal for the best work in physics. Lasers were all the rage, and the new heterolaser, which held great practical promise, attracted particular attention. There were competitors, but the publications of the Alferov group were the first. Support for the work of Soviet physicists by such authorities as John Bardeen and Nick Holonyak certainly influenced the decision of the commission. It is very important in any business to be in the right place and at the right time. If Zhores Ivanovich had not been in the States then, it is possible that this medal would have gone to competitors, although he was the first. It is known that "ranks are given by people, but people can be deceived." Many American scientists were involved in this story, for whom Alferov's reports on the first laser based on a double heterostructure were a complete surprise.

Alferov and Holonyak became close friends. In the process of various contacts (visits, letters, seminars, telephone conversations), which play an important role in the work and life of everyone, they regularly discuss problems of semiconductor and electronics physics, as well as life aspects.

The heterostructure Al x Ga 1– x As was subsequently infinitely expanded by multicomponent solid solutions - first theoretically, then experimentally (the most striking example is InGaAsP).

Space station "Mir" with solar panels based on heterostructures

One of the first successful applications of heterostructures in our country was the use of solar cells in space research. Solar cells based on heterostructures were created by Zh.I. Alferov and co-workers back in 1970. The technology was transferred to NPO Kvant, and solar cells based on GaAlAs were installed on many domestic satellites. When the Americans published their first work, Soviet solar batteries were already flying on satellites. Their industrial production was launched, and their 15-year operation at the Mir station brilliantly proved the advantages of these structures in space. And although the forecast of a sharp decrease in the cost of one watt of electrical power based on semiconductor solar batteries has not yet materialized, in space, solar batteries based on the heterostructure of A III B V compounds are by far the most efficient source of energy.

There were enough obstacles in the way of Zhores Alferov. As usual, our special services of the 70s. they did not like his numerous foreign awards, and they tried not to let him go abroad to international scientific conferences. There were envious people who tried to intercept the case and wipe Zhores Ivanovich from fame and the means necessary to continue and improve the experiment. But his enterprise, lightning-fast reaction and clear mind helped to overcome all these obstacles. Accompanied and "Lady Luck".

1972 was a particularly happy year. Zh.I.Alferov and his students-colleagues V.M.Andreev, D.Z.Garbuzov, V.I.Korolkov and D.N.Tretyakov were awarded the Lenin Prize. Unfortunately, due to purely formal circumstances and ministerial games, R.F.Kazarinov and E.L.Portnoy were deprived of this well-deserved award. In the same year, Zh.I. Alferov was elected to the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

On the day the Lenin Prize was awarded, Zh.I. Alferov was in Moscow and called home to report this joyful event, but the phone did not answer. He called his parents (since 1963 they lived in Leningrad) and joyfully told his father that his son was a Lenin Prize winner, and in response he heard: “What is your Lenin Prize? Our grandson was born! The birth of Vanya Alferov was, of course, the greatest joy of 1972.

Further development of semiconductor lasers was also associated with the creation of a distributed feedback laser proposed by Zh.I. Alferov in 1971 and realized several years later at the Physicotechnical Institute.

The idea of ​​stimulated emission in superlattices, expressed at the same time by R.F.Kazarinov and R.A.Suris, was implemented a quarter of a century later in Bell Telephone. Studies of superlattices, begun by Zh.I. Alferov and co-authors in 1970, unfortunately, developed rapidly only in the West. Works on quantum wells and short-period superlattices in a short time led to the birth of a new field of quantum physics of solids - the physics of low-dimensional electronic systems. The apogee of these works is currently the study of zero-dimensional structures - quantum dots. Works in this direction, carried out by Zh.I. Alferov's students of the second and third generations, P.S. Kopyev, N.N. Ledentsov, V.M. Ustinov, S.V. Ivanov, received wide recognition. N.N. Ledentsov became the youngest corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Semiconductor heterostructures, especially binary heterostructures, including quantum wells, wires, and dots, are now being studied by two-thirds of research groups working in the field of semiconductor physics.

In 1987, Zh.I. Alferov was elected Director of the Physicotechnical Institute, in 1989 - Chairman of the Presidium of the Leningrad Scientific Center of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and in April 1990 - Vice-President of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Subsequently, he was re-elected to these posts already in the Russian Academy of Sciences.

The main thing for Zh.I. Alferov in recent years was the preservation of the Academy of Sciences as the highest and unique scientific and educational structure in Russia. They wanted to destroy it in the 20s. as a "legacy of the totalitarian tsarist regime", and in the 90s. – as a “legacy of the totalitarian Soviet regime”. To preserve it, Zh.I. Alferov agreed to become a deputy in the State Duma of the last three convocations. He wrote: “For the sake of this great cause, we sometimes made compromises with the authorities, but not with our conscience. Everything that mankind has created, it has created thanks to science. And if our country is destined to be a great power, then it will be not thanks to nuclear weapons or Western investments, not thanks to faith in God or in the president, but thanks to the work of its people, faith in knowledge, in science, thanks to the preservation and development of scientific potential and education." Television broadcasts of meetings of the State Duma have repeatedly testified to the remarkable socio-political temperament and Zh.I. Alferov's keen interest in the prosperity of the country as a whole and science in particular.

Among other scientific awards of Zh.I.Alferov, we note the Hewlett-Packard Prize of the European Physical Society, the State Prize of the USSR, the Welker Medal; Karpinsky Prize, established in Germany. Zh.I. Alferov is a full member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a foreign member of the National Academy of Engineering and the US Academy of Sciences, a member of many other foreign academies.

Being vice-president of the Academy of Sciences and a deputy of the State Duma, Zh.I. Alferov does not forget that as a scientist he grew up within the walls of the famous Physico-Technical Institute, founded in Petrograd in 1918 by the outstanding Russian physicist and organizer of science Abram Fedorovich Ioffe. This institute gave the physical sciences a bright constellation of world-renowned scientists. It was at Phystech that N.N. Semyonov carried out research on chain reactions, which later won the Nobel Prize. Outstanding physicists I.V.Kurchatov, A.P.Aleksandrov, Yu.B.Khariton and B.P.Konstantinov worked here, whose contribution to the solution of the atomic problem in our country cannot be overestimated. Talented experimenters - Nobel laureate P.L. Kapitsa and G.V. Kurdyumov, theoretical physicists of the rarest talent - G. A. Godov, Ya. The name of the Institute will always be associated with the names of one of the founders of the modern theory of condensed matter, Ya.I.

Zh.I. Alferov, to the best of his ability, contributes to the development of Phystech. The Physical-Technical School was opened at the Institute of Physics and Technology and the process of creating specialized educational departments on the basis of the institute was continued. (The first department of this kind, the department of optoelectronics, was established at LETI back in 1973.) On the basis of the already existing and newly organized basic departments, the Faculty of Physics and Technology was created at the Polytechnic Institute in 1988. The development of the academic system of education in St. Petersburg was reflected in the creation of the Faculty of Medicine at the University and the integrated Scientific and Educational Center of the Physicotechnical Institute, which brought together schoolchildren, students and scientists in one beautiful building, which can rightly be called the Palace of Knowledge. Using the possibilities of the State Duma for wide communication with influential people, Zh.I. Alferov "knocked out" money for the creation of the Scientific and Educational Center from each prime minister (and they change so often). The first, most significant contribution was made by VS Chernomyrdin. Now the huge building of this center, built by Turkish workers, flaunts not far from the Physicotechnical Institute, clearly showing what an enterprising person obsessed with a noble idea is capable of.

Since childhood, Zhores Ivanovich has been accustomed to performing in front of a wide audience. B.P. Zakharchenya recalls his stories about the resounding success that he gained by reading from the stage, almost at preschool age, M. Zoshchenko’s story “The Aristocrat”: “I, my brothers, do not like women who are in hats. If a woman is wearing a hat, if the stockings on her are fildecos ... "

As a ten-year-old boy, Zhores Alferov read the wonderful book by Veniamin Kaverin "Two Captains" and all his subsequent life follows the principle of its protagonist Sanya Grigoriev: "Fight and seek, find and not give up!"

Who is he - "free" or "free"?

The Swedish king presents Zh.I. Alferov with the Nobel Prize

Compiled
V.V.RANDOSHKIN

according to materials:

Alferov Zh.I. Physics and life. - St. Petersburg: Nauka, 2000.

Alferov Zh.I. Double heterostructures: Concept and applications in physics, electronics and technology. – Uspekhi fizicheskikh nauk, 2002, v. 172, no. 9.

Science and humanity. International Yearbook. - M., 1976.