Hometown of Zh Alferov 7. Alferov Zhores: biography, personal life, photo. On the problems of modern science

Born in Vitebsk in 1930. He was named in honor of Jean Zhores, the founder of the newspaperL'Humaniteand the leader of the French Socialist Party.

He graduated from school with a gold medal and in 1952 graduated from the Faculty of Electronic Engineering of the Leningrad Electrotechnical Institute named after V.I. IN AND. Ulyanova (LETI).

From 1953 he worked at the Physico-Technical Institute named after V.I. A.F. Ioffe, took part in the development of the first domestic transistors and power germanium devices. In 1970 he defended his doctoral dissertation, summarizing a new stage of research on heterojunctions in semiconductors. In 1971, he was awarded the first international award - the Stuart Ballantyne Gold Medal of the Franklin Institute (USA), called the Minor Nobel Prize.

The Royal Academy of Sciences of Sweden awarded Zhores I. Alferov the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2000 - for his works that laid the foundations of modern information technology - for the development of semiconductor heterostructures and the creation of fast opto- and microelectronic components. The development of fiber-optic communications, the Internet, solar energy, mobile telephony, LED and laser technology is largely based on the research and discoveries of Zh.I. Alferov.

The outstanding contribution of J.I. Alferov was awarded numerous international and domestic prizes and awards: the Lenin and State Prizes (USSR), the Welker Gold Medal (Germany), the Kyoto Prize (Japan), the A.F. Ioffe, Popov Gold Medal (RAS), RF State Prize, Demidov Prize, Global Energy Prize (Russia), K. Boyer Prize and Gold Medal (USA, 2013) and many others.

J.I. Alferov was elected an honorary and foreign member of more than 30 foreign academies of sciences and scientific societies, including national academies of sciences: Italy, Spain, China, Korea and many others. The only Russian scientist who was simultaneously elected a foreign member of the US National Academy of Sciences and the US National Academy of Sciences. More than 50 universities from 20 countries have elected him an honorary doctor and professor.

J.I. Alferov is a full holder of the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, awarded with state awards of the USSR, Ukraine, Belarus, Cuba, France, China.

Since 1990 - Vice President of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, since 1991 - Vice President of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is one of the most prominent organizers of academic science in Russia and an active supporter of the creation of educational centers on the basis of the leading institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 1973, at the Physicotechnical Institute, he created the first basic department of optoelectronics at LETI. He was the director (1987-2003) and scientific supervisor (2003-2006) of the P.I. A.F. Ioffe of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and since 1988 the dean of the Physico-Technical Faculty of the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute (LPI), which he created. In 2002, he created the Academic Physics and Technology University - the first higher educational institution included in the RAS system. In 2009, the University was joined by the Lyceum "Physics and Technology School" created by him in 1987 on the basis of the Physicotechnical Institute and the Scientific Center for Nanotechnologies, and the St. Research University), in which he became rector. He created his own scientific school: among his students there are more than 50 candidates, dozens of doctors of sciences, 7 corresponding members of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Since 2010 - co-chairman, together with the Nobel laureate Roger Kornberg (USA), of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Skolkovo Foundation.

In February 2001, he created the Foundation for the Support of Education and Science (Alferov Foundation), investing in it a significant part of his Nobel Prize. The first charitable program of the foundation is “Establishing lifelong financial aid to the widows of academicians and corresponding members of the Russian Academy of Sciences who worked in St. Petersburg”. The Foundation has established scholarships for students of Russian schools and lyceums, students and graduate students of universities, awards and grants for young scientists. In a number of countries there are representative offices and independent funds for the support of education and science, established by J.I. Alferov and created with his assistance: in the Republic of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Italy, Ukraine, Azerbaijan.

ALFEROV, ZHORES IVANOVICH(p. 1930), Russian physicist. Born March 15, 1930 in Vitebsk. His parents, convinced communists, named the eldest son (at the age of 20 he died in the war) Marx, and the youngest - Jaures, in honor of the founder of the French Socialist Party. My father was the "red director" of various military factories, the family was thrown from city to city. Zhores graduated from the seven-year school in Syastroi (Ural), and in 1945 his parents moved to Minsk; here in 1948 Alferov graduated from the 42nd secondary school, where physics was taught by Ya.B. Meltserzon - “a teacher by the grace of God,” who managed in a ruined school, without a physical office, to instill in students an interest and love for his subject. On his advice, Alferov entered the Faculty of Electronic Engineering at the Leningrad Electrotechnical Institute. In 1953 he graduated from the institute and, as one of the best students, was recruited to the Physico-Technical Institute in the laboratory of V.M. Tuchkevich. Alferov has been working at this institute to this day, since 1987 - as a director.

In the first half of the 1950s, Tuchkevich's laboratory began to develop domestic semiconductor devices based on germanium single crystals. Alferov participated in the creation of the first transistors and power germanium thyristors in the USSR, and in 1959 he defended his Ph.D. thesis on the study of germanium and silicon power rectifiers. In those years, the idea of ​​using heterojunctions in semiconductors to create more efficient devices was first put forward. However, many considered the work on heterojunction structures to be futile, since by that time the creation of a junction close to ideal and the selection of heteropairs seemed to be an insoluble task. However, on the basis of the so-called epitaxial methods, which make it possible to vary the parameters of a semiconductor, Alferov was able to select a pair - GaAs and GaAlAs - and create effective heterostructures. He still likes to joke on this topic, saying that “it's okay to be heterosexual, not homo. Hetero is a normal way of development of nature. "

Beginning in 1968, LPTI began a competition with the American firms Bell Telephone, IBM and RCA - who would be the first to develop industrial technology for creating semiconductors based on heterostructures. Domestic scientists managed to outstrip competitors literally by a month; the first continuous laser based on heterojunctions was also created in Russia, in Alferov's laboratory. The same laboratory is justly proud of the development and creation of solar cells, which were successfully used in 1986 at the Mir space station: the batteries worked their entire service life until 2001 without a noticeable decrease in power.

The technology of designing semiconductor systems has reached such a level that it has become possible to set almost any parameters to the crystal: in particular, if the bandgaps are arranged in a certain way, then the conduction electrons in semiconductors can move only in one plane - the so-called "quantum plane" will be obtained. If you arrange the forbidden gaps differently, then the conduction electrons can move only in one direction - this is a "quantum wire"; it is possible to completely block the possibility of moving free electrons - you get a "quantum dot". It is the production and study of the properties of low-dimensional nanostructures - quantum wires and quantum dots - that Alferov is engaged in today.

According to the well-known tradition of Phystech, Alferov has been combining scientific research with teaching for many years. Since 1973 he has been the head of the basic department of optoelectronics at the Leningrad Electrotechnical Institute (now the St. Petersburg Electrotechnical University), since 1988 he is the dean of the Physics and Technology Faculty of the St. Petersburg State Technical University.

Alferov's scientific authority is extremely high. In 1972 he was elected a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, in 1979 - its full member, in 1990 - vice-president of the Russian Academy of Sciences and President of the St. Petersburg Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Alferov is an honorary doctor of many universities and an honorary member of many academies. 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 Prize and the A.F. Ioffe Prize of the Russian Academy of Sciences, National the non-governmental Demidov Prize of the Russian Federation (1999), the Kyoto Prize for advanced achievements in the field of electronics (2001).

In 2000 Alferov received the Nobel Prize in Physics "for achievements in electronics" together with the Americans J. Kilby and G. Kroemer. Kroemer, like Alferov, received an award for the development of semiconductor heterostructures and the creation of fast opto- and microelectronic components (Alferov and Kroemer received half of the prize money), and Kilby for the development of the ideology and technology for creating microchips (the second half).

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

In September 1917 IK 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 up to 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 director of a plant to head of a 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 public 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 youngest son became Jaurès in honor of the French revolutionary Jean Jaures, and the older one became Marx, in honor of the founder of scientific communism. Jaures and Marx were children of the director, which meant that they had to be an example both in their studies and in public life.

The Moloch of repression bypassed the Alferov family, but the war took its toll. Marks Alferov graduated from school on June 21, 1941 in Syasstroi. He entered the Ural Industrial Institute at the Faculty of Energy, but studied for only a few weeks, and then decided that his duty was 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, the front-line stories of his elder brother, his passionate youthful faith in the power of science and engineering thought, Zhores remembered for the rest of his life. Guards junior lieutenant Marks Ivanovich Alferov died in battle in the "second Stalingrad" - that was the name of the Korsun-Shevchenko operation at that time.

In 1956 Zhores came to Ukraine to find his brother's grave. In Kiev, 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 a steamer and the very next day sailed down the Dnieper to Kanev in a double cabin. They found the village of Khilki, near which Marx Alferov fiercely repulsed the attempt of selected German divisions to get out of the Korsun-Shevchenko "cauldron". We found a mass grave with a white plaster soldier on a pedestal, towering over the wildly overgrown grass, in which were interspersed with simple flowers, which are usually planted on Russian graves: marigolds, pansies, forget-me-nots.

In the destroyed Minsk, Zhores studied at the only Russian secondary school for men at that time, number 42, where there was a wonderful physics teacher - Yakov Borisovich Meltserzon. The school did not have a physical office, 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 work 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 the door to admission to any institute without exams. Leningrad Electrotechnical Institute (LETI) named after V.I.Ulyanov (Lenin) was an institution with a unique name: it mentions both the real surname and the party nickname of a person whom part of the population of the former USSR does not really respect now (now it is the 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 scientific advisor. In the third year, believing that mathematics and theoretical disciplines are easy, and "hands" need to learn a lot, he went to work in the vacuum laboratory of Professor BP Kozyrev. There, having begun experimental work in 1950 under the leadership of Natalia Nikolaevna Sozina, who had recently defended her thesis on the study of semiconductor photodetectors in the infrared region of the spectrum, Zh.I. Alferov first encountered semiconductors, which had become the main business of his life. The first studied monograph on the physics of semiconductors was the book by FF Volkenstein, "The electrical conductivity of semiconductors," written during the siege of Leningrad. Distribution took place in December 1952. Zh.I. Alferov dreamed of Phystech, 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 by precisely this distribution. In a letter to his parents in Minsk, he informed about the great happiness that fell to him to work at the Ioffe Institute. Zhores did not yet know that Abram Fedorovich two months earlier had been forced to leave the institute he had created, where he had been the director for more than 30 years.

Systematic studies of semiconductors at the Physicotechnical Institute began as early as the 1930s. last century. In 1932, V.P. Zhuze and B.V. Kurchatov investigated the intrinsic and impurity conductivity of semiconductors. In the same year, AF 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 the term itself and developing the theory of excitons. The first diffusion rectifying theory p – n-transition, which became the basis of the theory p – n-transition W. Shockley, was published by B.I.Davydov in 1939. On the initiative of A.F.Ioffe from the end of the 40s. at Phystech, studies of intermetallic compounds were started.

On January 30, 1953 Zh.I. Alferov started working for the new scientific adviser, 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 topic "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 phystech workers went to Moscow to IV Kurchatov and to other newly created "atomic" centers. "Semiconductor Elite" went with AF Ioffe to the recently organized semiconductor laboratory under the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Only DN Nasledov, BT Kolomiets and VM Tuchkevich remained at the Physicotechnical Institute from the “older” generation of “semiconductors”.

The new director of the LPTI, academician A.P. Komar, behaved in a far from the best way in relation to his predecessor, but in the development of the institute he chose a completely reasonable strategy. The main attention was paid to supporting work on the creation of qualitatively new semiconductor electronics, space research (high-speed gas dynamics and high-temperature coatings - Yu.A. Dunaev) and the development of methods for separating 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 on the physics of atomic collisions began (V.M. Dukel'skii, K. V. Fedorenko). EF Gross's brilliant report on the discovery of the exciton sounded at the first semiconductor seminar for Zh.I. Alferov at Phystech in February 1953. He experienced an incomparable sensation - to witness the birth of an outstanding discovery in the field of science in which one is making their first steps.

The Directorate of the Physicotechnical Institute was well aware of the need to attract young people to science, and each young specialist who came was interviewed at the Directorate. It was at this time that the future members of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR B.P. Zakharchenya, A.A. Kaplinsky, E.P. Mazets, V.V.Afrosimov and many others were admitted to Phystech.

At Phystech, Zh.I. Alferov very quickly supplemented his engineering and technical education with a physical one and became a highly qualified specialist in the quantum physics of semiconductor devices. The main thing was work in the laboratory - Alferov was lucky to be a participant in the birth of Soviet semiconductor electronics. Zhores Ivanovich keeps his laboratory journal of that time as a relic with a record of the creation by him on March 5, 1953 of the first Soviet transistor with p – n-transition. Today, one can wonder how a very small team of very young employees under the leadership of V.M. Tuchkevich within several months developed the fundamentals of the technology and metrology of transistor electronics: A.A. Lebedev - obtaining and alloying perfect single crystals of germanium, Zh.I. Alferov - obtaining transistors with parameters at the level of the best world samples, A.I.Uvarov and S.M. Ryvkin - the creation of a precision metric of germanium crystals and transistors, N.S. Yakovchuk - the development of circuits on transistors. In this work, to which the collective was given with all the passion of youth and the 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 creating 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 took over the work in Moscow. Physicotechnical Institute, FIAN and TsNII-108, using different design methods and technologies for manufacturing transistors, successfully solved the problem, and only NII-17, blindly copying well-known American samples, failed. True, the country's first semiconductor institute NII-35, created on the basis of one of its laboratories, was entrusted with the development of industrial technology of transistors and diodes with p – n-transitions, which they successfully dealt with.

In subsequent years, the small group of "semiconductors" at the Physicotechnical Institute significantly expanded, and in a very short time in the laboratory of Professor V.M. silicon.

In May 1958, Anatoly Petrovich Aleksandrov, the future president of the USSR Academy of Sciences, turned to Zh.I. Alferov 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 junior researcher was personally (!) Called by the Deputy Prime Minister of the USSR Dmitry Fedorovich Ustinov. They had to settle in the laboratory for two months, and the work was successfully completed in record time: as early as October 1958, the devices were on board a 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 a government award for work commissioned by the USSR Navy

The installation of the 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 he was informed that now there are new germanium valves on the submarines, the admiral winced and asked irritably: "Well, there were no domestic ones?"

In Kirovo-Chepetsk, where, through the efforts of many Phystech employees, work was carried out on the separation of lithium isotopes in order to create a hydrogen bomb, Zhores met many wonderful people and described them vividly. B. Zakharchenya remembered his 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. The technological process used molasses stored in a huge vat right in the workshop. Hungry workers plundered her. Boris Petrovich summoned the workers to a meeting, made a heartfelt speech, then climbed the stairs to the top edge of the vat, unbuttoned his pants and urinated in front of everyone in a vat of molasses. This did not affect the technology, but no one stole the molasses anymore. Zhores was very amused by this purely Russian solution to the question.

For successful work Zh.I. Alferov was regularly rewarded with cash prizes, and soon received the title of senior research fellow. In 1961 he defended his Ph.D. thesis, devoted mainly to the development and research of powerful germanium and partially silicon rectifiers. Note that these devices, like all previously created semiconductor devices, used unique physical properties p – n-transition - artificially created in a semiconductor single crystal distribution of impurities, in which in one part of the crystal 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-transition can be called homojunction.

Thanks to p – n-transition in crystals, it was possible to inject electrons and holes, and a simple combination of two p – n-transitions made it possible to realize monocrystalline amplifiers with good parameters - transistors. The most widespread are 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 followed the path of studying single-crystal structures based on germanium, silicon, semiconductor compounds of the type A III B V (elements of groups III and V of Mendeleev's Periodic Table). The improvement of the properties of devices went mainly along the path of improving the methods of forming p – n-transitions and the 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 technology for the production of gallium arsenide and other optical semiconductors have led to the creation of semiconductor lasers, highly efficient light sources and photocells. Combinations of diodes and transistors on a single monocrystalline silicon substrate became the basis of integrated circuits, on which the development of electronic computing technology 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 that 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 an extremely difficult life situation. After a lightning-fast first marriage, he had to divorce just as lightning-fast, having lost an apartment. As a result of scandals staged by a fierce mother-in-law in the party committee of the institute, Zhores settled in a semi-basement room of an old house of Physics and Technology.

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

In this regard, immediately after the appearance of the first work, in which the operation of a semiconductor laser based on a gallium arsenide homostructure was described, Zh.I. Alferov put forward the idea of ​​using heterostructures. The filed application for the grant of an inventor's certificate for this invention was classified under the laws of that time. Only after the publication of a similar idea by G. Kroemer in the USA, the secrecy label was lowered to the level of "for official use", but the copyright certificate was published only many years later.

Homojunction lasers were ineffective due to high optical and electrical losses. The threshold currents were very high, and lasing was carried out only at low temperatures. In his article, G. Kroemer proposed using double heterostructures for spatial confinement of carriers in the active region. He suggested that "using a pair of heterojunction injectors, lasing can be achieved in many indirect-gap semiconductors and improved in direct-gap semiconductors." In the inventor's certificate Zh.I. Alferov also noted the possibility of obtaining a high density of injected carriers and population inversion using "double" injection. It was pointed out that lasers based on homojunctions can provide "continuous lasing at high temperatures," moreover, it is possible to "increase the emitting surface and use new materials to obtain radiation in different 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 of control of electron and light fluxes in heterostructures. To avoid secrecy, only rectifiers were mentioned in the title of the article, although the same principles were 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 for p – n-transition, W. Shockley suggested using 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 in comparison with homojunctions. At the same time, there were various proposals for the use of heterojunctions in solar cells.

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, many people dissuaded Zh.I. Alferov from engaging in heterojunctions, including V.M. Tuchkevich, who later repeatedly recalled this in speeches and toasts, emphasizing the courage of Zhores Ivanovich and the gift of foreseeing the path of 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 location ok, build) of the Ge – GaAs transition with coinciding crystal 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. The GaP – GaAs and AlAs – GaAs systems were considered the most promising at that time. For "compatibility", these materials first of all had to satisfy the most important condition: have close values ​​of the constant of the crystal lattice.

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

It was not possible to find such a heteropair. And it was for this seemingly hopeless business that Zh.I. Alferov took up. The required 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.

BP Zakharchenya recalled that Zh.I. Alferov's small workroom was all piled up with rolls of millimeter paper, on which the tireless Zhores Ivanovich, from morning to evening, drew composition-property diagrams of multiphase semiconductor compounds in search of conjugated crystal lattices. Gallium arsenide (GaAs) and aluminum arsenide (AlAs) were suitable for an ideal heterojunction, but the latter was instantly oxidized in air, and it seemed that there could be no question of using it. 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 selected by a remarkable specialist in semiconductor chemistry, an associate of Physics and Technology, Nina Aleksandrovna Goryunova, who gave the world the famous A III B V compounds. She also dealt with more complex triple compounds. Zhores Ivanovich always treated Nina Alexandrovna's talent with great reverence and immediately understood her outstanding role in science.

Initially, an attempt was made to create a double heterostructure GaP 0.15 As 0.85 –GaAs. And it was grown by gas phase epitaxy, and a laser was formed on it. However, due to a slight mismatch in the lattice constants, it, like homojunction lasers, could operate only at the temperature of liquid nitrogen. 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 works, who educated many candidates and doctors of sciences, laureate of the Lenin Prize - the highest sign of recognition of creative merits at that time - did not defend any dissertation. He informed Zhores Ivanovich that the unstable aluminum arsenide itself is absolutely stable in the ternary compound AlGaAs, the so-called solid solution... This was evidenced by the crystals of this solid solution, which had been stored in his desk for several years, long ago grown by cooling from a melt by Alexander Borshchevsky, also a student of N.A. Goryunova. Approximately in 1967 the GaAs – AlGaAs heteropair, which has now become classical in the world of microelectronics, was found.

The study of phase diagrams, the kinetics of growth in this system, as well as the creation of a modified method of liquid-phase epitaxy, 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 lag of one month!) And independently, the Al x Ga 1– x As-GaAs was obtained in the USA by employees of the company IBM.

From that moment on, the realization of the main advantages of heterostructures proceeded 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 luminescence 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 thoroughly 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-efficiency LEDs based on single and double heterostructures;

- in solar cells based on heterostructures;

- in bipolar transistors on heterostructures;

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

If the possibility of controlling the type of conductivity of a semiconductor by doping with various impurities and the idea of ​​injection of 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-structure based on GaAs with the possibility of stimulated emission and the creation of lasers and light-emitting diodes on p – n-transitions were the grains from which semiconductor optoelectronics began to grow.

In 1967, Zhores Ivanovich was elected head of the sector of the Physicotechnical Institute. At the same time, he first went on a short scientific trip to England, where only theoretical aspects of the physics of heterostructures were discussed, since his English colleagues considered experimental research unpromising. Although the superbly 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 to get acquainted with architectural and artistic monuments in London. It was impossible to return without wedding gifts, so I had to visit "museums of material culture" - luxurious Western stores compared to Soviet ones.

The bride was Tamara Darskaya, daughter of the actor of the Voronezh Theater of Musical Comedy Georgy Darsky. She worked in Khimki near Moscow in the space firm of Academician V.P. Glushko. The wedding took place in the Krysha restaurant in the Evropeyskaya hotel - at that time it was quite affordable for the 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 Phystech, where VM Tuchkevich's laboratory was located in those years, he "generated" the world's first heterolaser. After that Zh.I. Alferov said to B.P. Zakharchenya: "Borya, I heterojunction all semiconductor microelectronics!" In 1968-1969. Alferov's group practically implemented all the basic ideas for controlling electron and light fluxes in classical heterostructures based on the GaAs – AlAs system and showed the advantages of heterostructures in semiconductor devices (lasers, LEDs, solar cells and transistors). The most important, of course, 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. Khayashi from Bell telephone, G. Kressel from RCA), who knew about 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 double heterostructure lasers operating at room temperature were given, impressed American colleagues as a bomb. Professor Y. Pankov from RCA, who had just, half an hour before the report, informed Zhores Ivanovich that, unfortunately, there was no permission for his visit to the company, 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 does not have time, since IBM and Bell telephone have already been invited to visit their laboratories before the lecture. After that, as I. Hayashi wrote, in Bell telephone redoubled efforts to develop double heterostructure lasers.

Workshop in Bell telephone, the examination of the laboratories and the discussion (and the American colleagues clearly did not hide, counting on reciprocity, technological details, designs and devices) quite clearly showed the advantages and disadvantages of the LPTI's developments. The soon ensuing rivalry to achieve continuous operation of lasers at room temperature was a rare example of open competition between laboratories of two antagonistic great powers at the time. Zh.I. Alferov and his co-workers won this competition, ahead of M.Panish's group from Bell telephone!

In 1970 Zh.I. Alferov and his collaborators Efim Portnoy, Dmitry Tretyakov, Dmitry Garbuzov, Vyacheslav Andreev, Vladimir Korolkov created the first semiconductor heterolaser operating in a continuous mode at room temperature. Independently, Itsuo Hayashi and Morton Panish reported on the continuous mode of lasing in double heterostructure lasers (with a diamond heat sink) in an article sent to print only a month later. CW lasing at Phystech was implemented in lasers with strip geometry, which were created using photolithography, with the lasers installed 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 strip lasers. The implementation of such a generation mode caused an explosion of interest. In early 1971, many universities and industrial laboratories in the USA, USSR, Great Britain, Japan, Brazil, and Poland began researching heterostructures and devices based on them.

Theorist Rudolf Kazarinov made a great contribution to the understanding of electronic processes in heterolasers. The generation time of the first laser was short. Zhores Ivanovich admitted that he was just enough to measure the parameters necessary for the article. Extending the life of lasers was quite difficult, but it was successfully solved by the efforts of physicists and technologists. Now the owners of CD players, for the most part, do not suspect that audio 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. Our life is hard to imagine without heterostructured LEDs and bipolar transistors, without low-noise transistors with high electron mobility for high-frequency applications, including, in particular, satellite TV 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 based on double heterojunctions at room temperature is primarily due to the fact that at the same time an optical fiber with low losses was created. This led to the birth and rapid development of fiber-optic communication systems. In 1971, these works were marked by the awarding 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 awarded medals to other Soviet scientists: in 1944, academician P.L. Kapitza, in 1974, academician N.N.Bogolyubov, and in 1981 Academician A.D. Sakharov. It is a great honor to get into such a company.

The awarding of the Ballantyne Medal to Zhores Ivanovich has a backstory associated with his friend. B.P. Zakharchenya was one of the first physicists in the USA in 1963. He flew almost all over America, met with such luminaries as Richard Feynman, Karl Anderson, Leo Szilard, John Bardeen, William Fairbank, Arthur Shawlov. At the University of Illinois, B.P. Zakharchenya met Nick Holonyak, the creator of the first efficient LED based on gallium arsenide phosphide, emitting light in the visible region of the spectrum. Nick Holonyak is one of the largest American scientists, a student of John Bardeen, the only two-time Nobel laureate in the world in one 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 USA, where his father, a simple miner, emigrated from Galicia even before the October Revolution. He brilliantly graduated from the University of Illinois, and his name is inscribed in golden letters on a special "Board of Honor" of this university. BP Zakharchenya recalled: “A snow-white shirt, a bow tie, a short haircut in the fashion of the 60s and, finally, an athletic figure (he lifted a barbell) made him a typical American. This impression was further strengthened when Nick spoke his native American language. But suddenly he switched to the language of his father, and nothing remained of the American gentleman. It was not Russian, but an amazing mixture of Russian and Rusyn (close to Ukrainian), flavored with salty miner's jokes and strong peasant expressions learned from their parents. At the same time, Professor Holonyak laughed very contagiously, turning into a mischievous Ruthenian guy before our eyes.

Back in 1963, when he showed BP Zakharchenya a miniature light-emitting diode shining green under a microscope, Professor Holonyak said: “Marvel, Boris, at my sweetheart. Nax time tell your institute there, maybe someone would like to come here to Illinois from your lads. I will teach him how to play the same sweet. "

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 Phystech). Zhores Ivanovich was not that "lad" who needed to learn to "make money". I could teach myself. His arrival was very successful: the Franklin Institute at that time was just awarding another Ballantyne medal for the best work in physics. Lasers were in vogue, and the new heterolaser, promising huge practical prospects, attracted special attention. There were competitors, but the publications of Alferov's group were the first. The support of the works 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 then Zhores Ivanovich had not been in the States, 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 on a double heterostructure were a complete surprise.

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

The Al x Ga 1– x As was further infinitely expanded with 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 experiments in the successful application 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 his colleagues 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 panels 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 electric power based on semiconductor solar cells has not yet come true, in space the most efficient source of energy until now is undoubtedly solar cells based on the heterostructure of A III B V compounds.

There were enough obstacles in the way of Zhores Alferov. As usual, our special services of the 70s. he did not like his numerous foreign awards, and they tried not to let him abroad to international scientific conferences. Envious people appeared, trying to intercept the case and wipe Zhores Ivanovich from the fame and funds necessary to continue and improve the experiment. But his entrepreneurial spirit, lightning-fast reaction and clear mind helped to overcome all these obstacles. "Mrs. Luck" was also accompanied.

1972 was especially happy. Zh.I. Alferov and his student-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, this well-deserved award was deprived of R.F. Kazarinov and E.L. Portnoy. 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 happily told his father that his son was a Lenin Prize laureate, and in response he heard: “What is your Lenin Prize? Our grandson was born! " The birth of Vanya Alferov was by far the greatest joy in 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 implemented 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... The studies of superlattices, begun by Zh.I. Alferov and co-authors in 1970, unfortunately, developed rapidly only in the West. Work on quantum wells and short-period superlattices in a short time led to the birth of a new field of quantum solid state physics - the physics of low-dimensional electronic systems. The apogee of these works is currently the study of zero-dimensional structures - quantum dots. The work in this direction, carried out by the students of Zh.I. Alferov already of the second and third generations, received wide recognition: P.S. Kopiev, N.N. Ledentsov, V.M. Ustinov, S.V. Ivanov. N.N. Ledentsov became the youngest corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Semiconductor heterostructures, especially double ones, including quantum wells, wires and dots, are now occupied 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 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 of Russia. They wanted to destroy it in the 20s. as a "legacy of the totalitarian tsarist regime", and in the 90s. - as “the legacy of the totalitarian Soviet regime”. To preserve it, Zh.I. Alferov agreed to become a deputy to 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 conscience. Everything that humanity has created, it has created thanks to science. And if our country is destined to be a great power, then it will not be thanks to nuclear weapons or Western investments, not thanks to faith in God or in the president, but thanks to the labor of its people, faith in knowledge, in science, thanks to the preservation and development of scientific potential and education ”. Television broadcasts of the State Duma meetings have repeatedly testified to the remarkable social and political temperament and ardent interest of Zh.I. Alferov in the prosperity of the country in general 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; the Karpinsky Prize, established in the Federal Republic of 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.

As vice-president of the Academy of Sciences and deputy of the State Duma, Zh.I. Alferov does not forget that as a scientist he grew up within the walls of the famous Physics and Technology Institute, founded in Petrograd in 1918 by the outstanding Russian physicist and organizer of science, Abram Fedorovich Ioffe. This institute gave physical science a bright constellation of world famous scientists. It was at Phystech that N.N. Semyonov carried out research on chain reactions, which were subsequently awarded the Nobel Prize. Outstanding physicists IV Kurchatov, AP Aleksandrov, Yu B Khariton and BP Konstantinov worked here, whose contribution to the solution of the atomic problem in our country cannot be overestimated. The most talented experimenters, the Nobel laureate P.L. Kapitsa and G.V. Kurdyumov, the theoretical physicists of the rarest talent, G.A. Godov, Ya.B. Zel'dovich and the Nobel laureate L.D. Landau, began their scientific activity at Phystech. The name of the institute will always be associated with the names of one of the founders of the modern theory of condensed matter YI Frenkel, brilliant experimenters EF Gross and VM Tuchkevich (who headed the institute for many years).

Zh.I. Alferov contributes to the development of Phystech to the best of his ability. The Physicotechnical School was opened at the Physicotechnical Institute and the process of creating specialized educational departments on the basis of the institute continued. (The first department of this kind - the Department of Optoelectronics - was created at LETI back in 1973) On the basis of the already existing and newly organized basic departments at the Polytechnic Institute in 1988, the Faculty of Physics and Technology was created. The development of the academic education system in St. Petersburg was expressed in the creation of the Faculty of Medicine at the University and the integrated Scientific and Educational Center of the Physicotechnical Institute, which united schoolchildren, students and scientists in one beautiful building, which can rightfully be called the Palace of Knowledge. Using the capabilities of the State Duma for broad 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 and most significant contribution was made by V.S. Chernomyrdin. Now the huge building of this center, built by Turkish workers, flaunts near Phystech, 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. BP 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 in hats. If a woman is in a hat, if her stockings are fildekos ... "

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 Sani 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

Made up
V. V. RANDOSHKIN

based on materials:

Alferov Zh.I. Physics and Life. - SPb .: Nauka, 2000.

Alferov Zh.I. Dual Heterostructures: Concept and Applications in Physics, Electronics and Technology. - Uspekhi fizicheskikh nauk, 2002, v. 172, no. 9.

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

The world famous Russian physicist Zhores Ivanovich Alferov is a famous academician, full holder of the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, Nobel Prize laureate.

Alferov, Zhores Ivanovich - a native of the city of Vitebsk, the Republic of Belarus. In 1930, a boy was born into a family of ideological and consistent communists, no one could have imagined that in the future he would become a famous scientist, whose name would be associated with great discoveries in the field of physics.

The parents named their eldest son in honor of Karl Marx, the German founder of economic philosophical doctrine - Marx, unfortunately, his life was short, he died at a young age in the war, in fierce battles in the Korsun-Shevchenko operation. The youngest son got the name Jaures, in honor of Jaures Jean, one of the founders and ideological leader of the Great French Revolution.

The life of the family was on wheels, the father - the "red director", was sent on the instructions of the Party to important sectors of the industrial front related to the country's defense. During the war, my father worked deep in the rear in the Sverdlovsk region, where Zhores successfully completed seven classes.

In 1945, the whole family moved to Minsk, which was destroyed as a result of heavy bombing. J.I. Alferov entered school 42 and graduated with a gold medal in 1948. Excellent knowledge in the field of physics, which became the basis for his further scientific activity, was laid by the humble teacher of physics "from God" Ya.B. Melzerzon.

The northern capital was chosen as the place of further study. A talented young man without entrance exams was enrolled as a first-year student at the Electrotechnical Institute (Leningrad), Faculty of Electronic Engineering. In 1953, having received a diploma as a promising student, he was left to work and engage in scientific research within the walls of the institute (laboratory of V.M. Tuchkevich). With a talented team of scientists, Zhores Ivanovich was engaged in the development of domestic transistors, nowadays they are used in all electronic devices. In 1953, Alferov presented the first reliable home-grown transistor and power germanium (Ge) and silicon (Si) devices.

In 1961 J.I. Alferov defended the candidate minimum, which was the result of ten years of research and work. In 1970, a promising physicist presented for discussion and brilliantly defended his doctoral dissertation, in which research on semiconductors was also presented. In 1972, Alferov was awarded a professorship, and in 1973, he was already heading the department of optoelectronics at his own institute, where he came to study as a timid young man.

1990s. difficult years for scientific and research work, but Alferov does not cease to be engaged in nanoelectronics, which in the future will become the basis of zone engineering. On October 10, 2000, Alferov received recognition for his scientific activity - he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his research work in the field of semiconductors. Since 2010, the scientist was invited to head the innovative scientific center in Skolkovo, where there will be all the opportunities for conducting scientific experiments and experiments in the field of high computer technologies, nuclear and space industries, new developments in medicine, microbiology, biochemistry.

During his long scientific life, J.I. Alferov wrote hundreds of works, monograms, articles for scientific conferences, magazines, books. Received awards in various countries, domestic and international awards. He became an honorary scientist of many scientific institutions and a representative of international public organizations. Was awarded the Order of Lenin (1986); Order of the October Revolution (1980); Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1975); Order of the Badge of Honor (1959).

J.I. Alferov, is a full holder of the Order of Merit to the Fatherland:

1999 Order of Merit for the Fatherland III p. - for the colossal contribution to the formation and promotion of national science, and the training of qualified personnel from among talented youth.

2000 Order "For Merit to the Fatherland" II p. for scientific achievements and in the field of education and training of scientific personnel.

2005 - Order of Merit for the Fatherland, 1st p. - for a significant contribution to the development and promotion of national science and effective public activities for the benefit of society and the state.

2010 Order "For Merit to the Fatherland" IV p. - for social and scientific activities for the good of the Fatherland.

Zhores Alferov changed the idea that electronics is the prerogative of the Japanese and Americans. Such a familiar mobile phone, the Internet via optical fiber, LEDs, batteries that accumulate solar energy - all this is due to the use of semiconductors obtained by the painstaking work of Zh.I. Alferov and his team of scientists. CD players and floppy drives in computers without the "Alferov laser" are just ordinary hardware. Nowadays, the scientist is working on the creation of a modern, ultra-fast, compact, computer.

J.I. Alferov is married twice. In his second marriage, he has a son, who, to the chagrin of his father, did not follow in his footsteps, but is engaged in business. He has two daughters from his first marriage and an adopted daughter - the child of his second wife. Favorite vacation spot with. Komarovo, dacha on the shores of the Gulf of Finland.

Cavaliers of the Order of Merit to the Fatherland, 1st degree.

ALFEROV ZHORES IVANOVICH

(b. in 1930)

The famous Soviet and Russian scientist Zhores Ivanovich Alferov was born on March 15, 1930 in the city of Vitebsk (then still in the Byelorussian SSR).

His parents were native Belarusians. The father of the future scientist, Ivan Karpovich Alferov, changed many professions.

During the First World War, he fought, was a hussar, a non-commissioned officer of the Life Guards. For his bravery he was nominated for an award, becoming twice the Knight of St. George.

In September 1917, the elder Alferov joined the Bolshevik Party, and after a while he switched to economic work. Since 1935, Zhores's father held various managerial positions at the military factories of the USSR. He worked as a director of a plant, a combine, and head of a trust. Due to the specifics of his father's work, the family often moved from place to place. Little Alferov had a chance to see Stalingrad, Novosibirsk, Barnaul, Syasstroy near Leningrad, Turinsk of the Sverdlovsk region, dilapidated Minsk.

The boy's mother, Anna Vladimirovna, worked in the library, in the personnel department, and most of the time she was a housewife.

The parents of the future scientist were avid communists. They named their eldest son Marx (in honor of Karl Marx), and the younger received the name Jaurès (in honor of Jean Jaures, founder of the French Socialist Party, ideologist and founder of the newspaper L'Humanite).

Jaurès's childhood memories are often associated with his older brother. Marx helped the boy with his studies, never gave him offense. After graduating from school and several months of study at the Ural Industrial Institute, he dropped everything and went to the front to defend his homeland. At the age of 20, junior lieutenant Marks Alferov was killed.

Zhores received his primary education at Syastroi. On May 9, 1945, the boy's father was assigned to Minsk, where the family soon moved. In Minsk, Zhores was assigned to study at the only 42nd secondary school not destroyed in the city, from which he graduated in 1948 with a gold medal.

The famous Ya. B. Mel'zerzon was a physics teacher at school 42. Despite the absence of a physical office, the teacher managed to instill in schoolchildren love and interest in their subject. Noticing a talented boy, Yakov Borisovich helped him in every way in his studies. After graduating from school, the teacher recommended Alferov to go to Leningrad and enter the Leningrad Electrotechnical Institute. V.I. Lenin (LETI).

Physical lessons acted magnetically on young Alferov. He was especially interested in the teacher's story about the work of a cathode oscilloscope and the principles of radar, so that after school the boy already knew who he wanted to be. He entered LETI on the specialty "Electrovacuum Engineering" of the Faculty of Electronic Engineering (FET). At that time the institute was one of the "pilot" universities in the field of domestic electronics and radio engineering.

In the third year, the capable student was hired to work in the vacuum laboratory of Professor B.P. Kozyrev, where young Alferov began his first experimental work under the leadership of Natalya Nikolaevna Sozina. Later Alferov spoke very warmly about his first scientific advisor. Shortly before joining the Zhores Institute, she herself defended her thesis on the study of semiconductor photodetectors in the infrared region of the spectrum and in every possible way helped in the research of Zhores Alferov.

The student liked the atmosphere in the laboratory, the research process, and he decided to become a professional physicist. Zhores was especially interested in the study of semiconductors. Under the guidance of Sozina, Alferov wrote his thesis on the production of films and the study of the photoconductivity of bismuth telluride.

In 1952, Alferov graduated from LETI and decided to continue his scientific research in the field of physics that interested him. When assigning graduates to work, Alferov was lucky: he refused to stay at LETI and was admitted to the Physico-Technical Institute named after V.I. A.F. Ioffe (LFTI).

At that time, the monograph by Abram Fedorovich Ioffe "Basic concepts of modern physics" was the reference book of the young scientist. The assignment at Phystech was one of the happiest moments in the life of the famous scientist, which determined his further path in science.

By the time the young specialist came to the institute, the luminary of Soviet science, the director of LPTI, Abram Fedorovich Ioffe, had already left his post. “Under Ioffe,” a semiconductor laboratory was formed at the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences, where the outstanding scientist hired almost all the best physicists - researchers of the semiconductor field. The young scientist was lucky for the second time - he was seconded to this laboratory.

The great A.F. Ioffe was a pioneer of semiconductor science in general and the founder of domestic developments in this area. It was thanks to him that Phystech became the center of semiconductor physics.

In the 1930s, Phystech carried out various studies that became the fundamental foundations of a new field of physics. Among such works, one should especially highlight the joint work of Ioffe and Frenkel in 1931, in which scientists described the tunneling effect in semiconductors, as well as the work of Zhuze and Kurchatov on the intrinsic and impurity conductivity of semiconductors.

However, after a series of successful works, Ioffe became interested in nuclear physics, other brilliant physicists were engaged in other fields of science close to them, so that the development of semiconductor physics slowed down somewhat. Who knows how things would have developed further if in 1947 American scientists had failed to achieve the transistor effect on a point transistor. In 1949, the first transistor with p-n-transitions.

In the early 1950s, the Soviet government set the institute a specific task - to develop modern semiconductor devices that could be used in domestic industry. The semiconductor laboratory was supposed to obtain single crystals of pure germanium and, on their basis, create planar diodes and triodes. American scientists proposed the method of mass industrial production of transistors in November 1952, now it was the turn of Soviet scientists.

The young scientist found himself at the very epicenter of scientific research. He had a chance to participate in the creation of the first domestic transistors, photodiodes, powerful germanium rectifiers, etc.

Tuchkevich's laboratory fulfilled the task of the Soviet government with excellent marks. Zhores Alferov took an active part in the development. Already on March 5, 1953, he made the first transistor that handled loads and showed itself well in operation. In 1959, Zhores Alferov received a government award for the complex of the work carried out.

In 1960, along with other scientists, Zhores went to an international conference on semiconductor physics in Prague. Among the famous scientists there were Abram Joffe and John Bardeen, a representative of the famous trinity Bardeen-Shockley-Brattain, who created the first transistor in 1947. After attending the conference, Alferov became even more interested in scientific research.

The next year, Zhores Alferov defended his Ph.D. thesis on the creation and research of powerful germanium and partially silicon rectifiers, and was awarded the degree of candidate of technical sciences. In fact, this work summed up his ten years of research in this field of science.

He did not have much thought about which area of ​​physics to choose for further research - he was already seriously working on the production of semiconductor heterostructures and the study of heterojunctions. Alferov understood that if he succeeds in creating a perfect structure, this will be a real leap in the physics of semiconductors.

At that time, the domestic power semiconductor electronics was formed. For a long time, scientists have failed to develop devices based on heterojunctions due to the difficulty of creating a junction close to ideal.

Alferov showed that in such varieties p-n-transitions like p-i-n, p-n-n+ in semiconductor homostructures, at operating current densities, the current in the throughput direction is determined by recombination in heavily doped R and n (n+) areas of structures. Moreover, the average i (n) the region of the homostructure is not the main one.

When working on a semiconductor laser, the young scientist proposed to use the advantages of a double heterostructure of the type p-i-n (p-n-n+, n-p-p+) ... The application for Alferov's copyright certificate was classified, the classification was removed only after the American scientist Kremer published such conclusions.

At the age of 30, Alferov was already one of the leading experts in the field of semiconductor physics in the Soviet Union. In 1964 he was invited to take part in an international conference on semiconductor physics held in Paris.

Two years later, Zhores Alferov formulated the general principles of controlling electron and light fluxes in heterostructures.

In 1967, Alferov was elected head of the laboratory of the LPTI. Work on investigations of heterostructures was in full swing. Soviet scientists came to the conclusion that it is possible to realize the main advantages of the heterostructure only after obtaining a heterostructure of the Al type x Ga1- x As.

In 1968 it became clear that not only Soviet physicists were working on this study of heterostructures. It turned out that Alferov and his team were only a month ahead of the researchers from the IBM laboratory in their discovery of the Al-type heterostructure x Ga1- x As. In addition to IBM, such monsters of electronics and semiconductor physics as Bell Telephone and RCA took part in the research race.

In the laboratory of N.A.

By the end of 1969, Soviet scientists, led by Alferov, had realized practically all possible ideas for controlling electron and light fluxes in classical heterostructures based on the gallium arsenide - aluminum arsenide system.

In addition to creating a heterostructure close in its properties to an ideal model, a group of scientists led by Alferov created the world's first semiconductor heterolaser operating in a continuous mode at room temperature. Competitors from Bell Telephone and RCA offered only weaker options based on the use of a single heterostructure in lasers p AlGaAs- p GaAs.

In August 1969, Alferov made his first trip to the United States to the International Conference on Luminescence in Newark, Delaware. The scientist did not deny himself the pleasure and made a report in which he mentioned the characteristics of the created lasers based on AlGaAs. The effect of Alferov's report exceeded all expectations - the Americans were far behind in their studies, and only specialists from Bell Telephone repeated the success of Soviet scientists a few months later.

Based on the technology of highly efficient and radiation-resistant solar cells based on AlGaAs / GaAs heterostructures, developed in the 1970s by Alferov, the Soviet Union for the first time in the world organized mass production of heterostructure solar cells for space batteries. When similar papers were published by American scientists, Soviet batteries had been used for various purposes for many years. In particular, one of these batteries was installed in 1986 on the Mir space station. For many years of operation, it has operated without significant power degradation.

In 1970, on the basis of ideal transitions in multicomponent InGaAsP compounds (proposed by Alferov), semiconductor lasers were designed, which are used, in particular, as radiation sources in fiber-optic communication lines of increased range.

In the same 1970, Zhores Ivanovich Alferov successfully defended his doctoral dissertation, in which he summarized research on heterojunctions in semiconductors, the advantages of using heterostructures in lasers, solar cells, transistors, etc. For this work, the scientist was awarded the degree of Doctor of Physics and Mathematics.

In a short time, Zhores Alferov has achieved truly phenomenal results. His work led to the rapid development of fiber optic communication systems. The following year, the scientist was awarded the first international award - the Ballantyne Gold Medal of the Franklin Institute in the USA (Philadelphia), which is called the "Minor Nobel Prize" in the world of science. By 2001, besides Alferov, only three Soviet physicists were awarded a similar medal - P. Kapitsa, N. Bogolyubov and A. Sakharov.

In 1972, the scientist, together with his fellow students, was awarded the Lenin Prize. In the same year, Zhores Ivanovich became a professor at LETI, and in the next year - the head of the basic department of optoelectronics (EO) at the Faculty of Electronic Engineering at the Physicotechnical Institute. In 1988, Zh. I. Alferov organized the Physics and Technology Faculty at the St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute and became its dean.

Alferov's works in the 90s of the XX century were devoted to studies of the properties of low-dimensional nanostructures: quantum wires and quantum dots.

On October 10, 2000, the Nobel Committee on Physics awarded the 2000 Nobel Prize to Zhores Ivanovich Alferov, Herbert Kroemer and Jack Kilby for "their basic work in the field of information and communication systems." Specifically, Alferov and Kroemer received an award "for the development of semiconductor heterostructures that are used in ultrafast microelectronic components and fiber-optic communication."

With their work, all three laureates significantly accelerated the development of modern technology, in particular, Alferov and Kroemer discovered and developed fast and reliable opto- and microelectronic components that are now used in various fields.

The scientists divided the monetary prize of $ 1 million among themselves in the following proportions: Jack Kilby received half of the prize for his work in the field of integrated circuits, and the other half was equally divided between Alferov and Kroemer.

In his presentation speech on December 10, 2000, Professor of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Tord Kleson analyzed the main achievements of three great scientists. Alferov gave his Nobel lecture on December 8, 2000 at Stockholm University in excellent English and without notes.

In 1967, Zhores Alferov married Tamara Georgievna Darskaya, the daughter of a famous actor. His wife worked for some time under the guidance of Academician V.P. Glushko in Moscow. For about six months, people in love flew to each other from Moscow to Leningrad and back, until Tamara agreed to move to Leningrad.

In his free time from science, the scientist is interested in the history of World War II.

Already at a rather late age, Alferov began his career as a politician. In 1989 he was elected People's Deputy of the USSR, was a member of the Interregional Deputy Group. After the collapse of the Union, he did not abandon his political activities.

In the fall of 1995, the famous scientist was included as a candidate in the federal list of the electoral association “All-Russian social and political movement“ Our Home is Russia ””. According to the results of voting in the federal district, he was elected a deputy of the Russian State Duma of the second convocation (since 1995), and after a while he became a member of the committee on education and science (subcommittee on science).

In 1997, Alferov was included in the Scientific Council of the Security Council of the Russian Federation.

In 1999, Zhores Ivanovich was elected a deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation of the third convocation. The scientist was a member of the Communist Party faction, the successor of the CPSU, in which Alferov was from 1965 to August 1991. In addition, the scientist was a member of the Bureau of the Leningrad Regional Committee of the CPSU in 1988-1990, a delegate to the XXVII Congress of the CPSU.

Currently, Alferov is still an avid communist and atheist.

More than 350 scientific articles, three fundamental scientific monographs have been published from Alferov's pen. He has over 100 copyright certificates for inventions. The scientist is the editor-in-chief of the "Journal of Technical Physics".

In 1972, Alferov was elected a corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, in 1979 - an academician, in 1990 he became vice president of the USSR Academy of Sciences, in 1991 - an academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) and is now its vice president.

In parallel, Alferov holds the positions of Chairman of the Presidium of the St. Petersburg Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences (since 1989), Director of the Center for Physics of Nanoheterostructures, Chairman of the International Foundation. MV Lomonosov for the revival and development of fundamental research in the field of natural and humanitarian sciences, a member of the Bureau of the Department of Physical Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a member of the General Physics and Astronomy Section of the Department of Physical Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, director of the Institute of Physics and Technology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (since 1987).

In all his positions, Alferov takes an active position. His work schedule is scheduled for a month in advance.

In addition to the Nobel Prize, the scientist was awarded various medals and prizes, among which it is worth highlighting the gold medal. Stuart Ballantyne of the Franklin Institute (USA, 1971), the "Hewlett-Packard" prize of the European Physical Society, the International Prize of the Gallium Arsenide Symposium (1987), the Gold Medal of H. Welker (1987), the. AF Ioffe RAS (1996), National Non-Governmental Demidov Prize of the Russian Federation (1999), Kyoto Prize for Advanced Achievements in the Field of Electronics (2001).

Also, the scientist was awarded the Lenin Prize (1972), the State Prize of the USSR (1984) and the State Prize of the Russian Federation (2002).

Zhores Alferov was awarded many medals and orders of the USSR and the Russian Federation, including the Order of the Badge of Honor (1958), the Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1975), the Order of the October Revolution (1980), the Order of Lenin (1986), the Medal for Services to the Fatherland »3rd degree.

The Nobel laureate is an active and honorary member of various scientific societies, academies and universities, including the US National Academy of Engineering (1990), US National Academy of Sciences (1990), Korean Academy of Science and Technology (1995), Franklin Institute (1971), Academy of Sciences Republic of Belarus (1995), University of Havana (1987), US Optical Society (1997), St. Petersburg Humanitarian University of Trade Unions (1998).

In 2005, a bronze bust of Zhores Alferov was installed on the territory of the St. Petersburg Humanitarian University of Trade Unions. The lifetime opening of the bust was timed to coincide with the scientist's 75th birthday.

The famous scientist is the founder of the Foundation for the Support of Education and Science to support talented student youth, promote their professional growth, and encourage creative activity in scientific research in priority areas of science. Alferov was the first to make a contribution to the Foundation, using part of the funds of his Nobel Prize.

In his autobiography, prepared for the Nobel website, the scientist recalls Kaverin's excellent book "Two Captains", which he read as a 10-year-old boy. Since that time, all his life he has followed the life principles of one of the main characters of Sani Grigoriev's book: "Fight and seek, find and not give up."

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