The PHYNICS partnership is organized along three axes, reflecting the different degrees of maturity achieved for the different types of nanostructures that we study. We now briefly examine these topics and how they evolved with respect to the previous ILNACS partnership.

1. Mechanisms of nucleation and growth of semiconductor nanostructures

As regards nanowires, basic growth studies are at the core of our program. This constitutes an interesting physical domain per se, where the teams involved combine world-recognized expertise in both theory and experiments. The French and Russian partners now bring privileged access to unique novel equipment (the NanoMAX electron microscope and the European XFEL X-ray laser, respectively) that allow them to study growth in real time, a major progress indeed. The main Russian partner belongs to ITMO University, one of the only two Saint Petersburg universities elected to the 5-100 Russian Academic Excellence Project. Beyond their intrinsic interest, these basic growth studies are essential for achieving during growth the control of the structure, size, local composition and uniformity of the nanowires, which is a prerequisite for the in-depth study of their physical properties, carried out within axis 2 and for future devices. The investigation of nanowire growth is complemented by studies of the growth of complex planar structures aimed at fabricating, again in a highly controlled fashion, the samples required by some of the device studies carried out within axis 3.

2. The study of the fundamental optical, electronic and magnetic properties of nanostructures involves experimental groups from LPCNO and C2N that collaborate with theoreticians from Ioffe Institute (Saint Petersburg), as well as spectroscopists from Institut Néel and Ioffe Institute. Within these well-established partnerships, the fields covered evolve quite considerably, with the LPCNO team shifting from quantum dots to 2D structures and the Institut Néel team now largely focusing on the spectroscopy of nanowires (see axis 1).

3. The third axis, devoted to advanced devices, focuses on two types of structures. In this domain, PHYNICS formalizes collaborations initiated in the recent years with new Russian partners. The study of semiconductor lasers now involves not only the C2N team and its usual Saint Petersburg Academic University - Ioffe Institute partners, who focus on quantum dot lasers, but also Institut de Physique de Nice and their ITMO theoretician collaborators, who are experts in the investigation of laser dynamics. In turn, the IES group now focuses on structures for terahertz emission. This requires basic growth studies of novel planar structures (see axis 1). On the Russian side, the contribution of Ioffe Institute is now supplemented by that of Kotel'nikov Institute (Moscow).

Coordinators:

Frank Glas, DR CNRS, in charge of research group Elaboration and physics of epitaxial structures, Centre de Nanosciences et de Nanotechnologies (C2N), Université Paris-Saclay, CNRS, Palaiseau.

Vladimir Dubrovskii, Professor, head of the Laboratory of Physics of Epitaxial Nanostructures, ITMO University, Saint Petersburg.