Heterostructures

Let's talk about the work, the major work that you've done. You've won the Lenin Prize and a whole rafter of awards, including the Nobel. Your work built on what had come before in international science. There was the transistor, then the laser/maser, then the semiconductor, and then your discovery, the new world that you opened up, came from the heterostructure, the semiconductor heterostructure. Talk a little about that, how you learned from what had happened from the past and what was new about what you discovered.

It was very important, in my case, that I first time came to the Ioffe Institute when we were working in the laboratory for transistors, research in transistors, development of transistors, because the discovery of transistors in semiconductor physics is not only a technical [discovery]; it's just a new physics game.

John Bardine ingeniously guessed that there is injection of non-equilibrium carriers. They carried out this kind of research a lot and started to understand that in some cases it would be very useful to use the potential barriers in order to concentrate carriers in some kind of box.

I'm an emotional guy. We got the letter, the pre-print, for p injection laser from Robert Ho from Schenectady -- he sent this pre-print to Professor Nasiedev, with whom I have very good scientific relations. He gave to me this pre-print and I became very excited about it, and just guessed that it's excellent device. It's a new type of device for physics, but it would work only in liquid nitrogen temperature. So, in order to improve the product, the idea of double heterostructure came to my mind, and we discussed that with theoretician who was working at that time at the Ioffe Institute. Later he emigrated to the U.S., Rudolf Gasarinov. So, we just proposed this double heterostructure. I immediately started to carry out experiments and think more and more. And then I understood that in the case of heterostructures we have just the tool where you can control electron and light fluxes by different ways than existed before in homostructures. In just a very short time it came to my mind that it's a lot of new physics and new possibilities for electronics. I thought we use it today in a bad mood because I came to know about Academician Heartchania, an old friend of mine ...

He passed away, didn't he?

Yes, passed away. We were friends. He became a writer also, a little bit, and he was writing about that. I came to him and told him, "You know, the heterostructure is so important that I shall [proposed that] the whole electronics will be based on heterostructures." So, I was occupied by this idea immediately. I was telling about that everywhere and many people did not believe in that. It's okay. It's paper patent. But then it became not paper patented.

What is also very interesting that happened frequently -- many things have been done practically similar to Neodzly, independent and similar Neodzly, in my laboratory and in different laboratories in the United States. Heterostructure we invented and published the paper, and we sent out publication just one month earlier than Woodel and Trubrick from IBM. We published new properties of the double heterostructure laser much earlier. But then CW operation was achieved practically together with Morton Benish's group in Bell Telephone and mine.

What is also very important -- I consider that in that Cold War time, it was open competition between us. I visited laboratory Morton Benish, he visited my laboratory in Leningrad, and we told each other practically everything. Much later, in 2000, when I was getting Nobel Prize, and BBC TV carried out a roundtable with [other] Nobel Prizewinners, my neighbor at this table was James Heckman, an economist who got the Nobel Prize -- he is from Chicago University. I forgot exactly the question but I always remember what he said. He said that in the second part of the twentieth century, the scientific technological progress was determined by competition of the Soviet Union and the United States. And from this point of view, it's a great pity that this competition now over, finished.

So, from this creative moment when you saw the possibilities of another structure in the use of different materials, from that breakthrough came all sorts of the key elements of the Information Age, from the cell phone to CDs.

Definitely. First of all, it became double heterostructure laser, and it was at the time of the burst of fiber optical communications system. Then it was lasers became the needle in a CD, then on the base of heterostructure, it had been done not by us but nevertheless it was based on our research and our structures, ham transistor, which is the main element in cell phones. Then bipolar heterostructure transistors we did first in our laboratory. It was predicted by Herbert Kremer, and so on. Then heterostructure solar cells, which play the most important role in space.

And then from the idea of double heterostructure, a whole new chapter of physics has appeared -- the first brilliant work has been done at Bell in this direction. Low dimensional electron structure and low dimension -- two-dimensional electron gas, one-dimensional, and what we are doing last the fifteen years in our laboratory, quantum dots. So, there were contributions, of course. Definitely our group, and I was pioneer. Yes. But of course, a lot of contributions from other groups, and what is also very important is that at the first stage, many people did not believe in it. Sometimes my graduate students who were working in my group told me, "You see, no one publishes work in this direction. Explain these stupid things!"

I had just returned from a conference and told Yishi it was not published yet but they are working. But for instance, how it was considered the result in this area, we submitted a paper to an international conference in semiconductor physics in 1968, in Moscow, and this paper [suggested] plenty of new physics results which later became one of the parts of my Nobel Prize winning. [But originally] it was rejected bya program committee because they considered that there is no important news there. Then it was accepted with an announcement only of the title of the paper.

It's an interesting mix to be a scientist. You depend on tradition, you build on tradition, but then you're a rebel. You break away and make a leap that is in part a leap of faith, because nobody recognizes it.

Yes. Yes, of course. The most interesting time in physics, in general, was the creation of quantum physics in the beginning of the twentieth century, but in semiconductor physics and technology, a new chapter opened after the invention of the transistor, then invention of lasers. It so stimulated development, and it stimulated my discovery for heterostructures, too. For this part of physics in general, the sixties were the best time, because we came to know a lot from previous research in p injections and we start to understand how we could develop the whole area.

We're living in a very different time, and the competition between our countries doesn't exist anymore. There is a fear, a great fear, of terrorism, and so on. Do you feel that this is going to work against the competition but also collaboration that existed in the Cold War? I know you tried to come to Berkeley last year and had trouble getting a visa, didn't you?

In my opinion, is the most important enemies of science everywhere -- in your country, in my country especially, maybe, but in your country too -- is bureaucracy. It's bureaucracy. I understand that after September 11, yes, there are a lot of changes. But you see, I was invited a long time ago to visit Berkeley, I promised to do that, but there was not time, and then I decided, okay, I can come in September of last year. The Consul General of the United States, whom I know very well, called me and explained, "You know, it's not under my control, but you must now get your fingerprint and go for an interview at the consulate." It never happened before.

The U.S. Consulate in St. Petersburg?

Yes, I must go there and get the interview. "And excuse me, [before] we were giving you a visa without that, but now it's necessary. I am not in control of these people." I said, "Okay, if it's rules, yeah, we always obey the rules." We came together, with my wife. And there I was, at some kind of glass window -- through glass we were speaking, came some woman. Later the Consul explained me that she was not under him, it was maybe from FBI, maybe, I don't know from where, and this woman started to ask me why I am going to visit Berkeley, what is the reason, and so on. Yeah, I answered, yes. And then she asked me what is a heterostructure. I explained to her what is heterostructure.

She just left, maybe consulting there or maybe calling to somewhere, returned and said that I had not given the answer. I give a little bit different explanation, she left again, returned again, and she told me again that I had not given the answer. I began writing down some [chemical formulae] for her, said "now I thank you very much, I've explained what goes on" -- she asked, "It's used in lasers?" I said yes. "No, it's sensitive technology." She again left, returned again and said, "You have not given the answer."

So, we spent about ten minutes in this kind of conversation, and I finished. I said, "Excuse me. Return my passport. I give you a lot of explanation, what it is, heterostructure. The last explanation I can say you, is that the heterostructure is for what I got the Nobel Prize." But she had some consultation, returned and said, "You're right in this [place on the] form but not right in this one. You mentioned three five heterostructures, not mentioning [up] to six." I don't know who told her about that but she returned with a piece of paper.

So, I don't know. In my opinion, there was this kind of custom in Soviet time, when we had in the foreign department of the academy, in the embassy, some KGB representatives, and they do the same stupid things, ask stupid questions, and so on. One time I remember when we returned from a foreign trip, the woman in the foreign department of the academy who understood nothing of science requested the report about our trip to Hyore. And I said, "I will not give to you the report because no one here can understand that." But it was okay because I was Academician, full member of the academy. And this: "I'm not giving the answer."

So, I left the consulate and said, "return our passport. I won't go in this case." I immediately called Professor Konichan and explained to her to what had happened. I said I would [still] visit because Berkeley is special place and I always fulfill what I promised, but we changed the schedule to April, "and maybe you will be work a little bit in order to clear everything with my visa and it will not be necessary to explain what it is, heterostructures, because I did that."

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