This research activity focuses on the development and characterization of innovative semiconductors for applications to optoelectronic devices, photonics, photovoltaics, and sensors. Currently, the most part of the activities is focused on perovskites, a new class of materials with
outstanding properties.

In our group we study innovative semiconductors and their properties, mainly by means of advanced optical techniques, such as time resolved photoluminescence spectroscopy and photoluminescence at a micro-scale. Thanks to our large network of collaborations, we are actively involved in the development of the material, from its growth to its characterization with many complementary techniques, from ab-initio simulations of its properties to the realization of devices. We are now focused on halide perovskites, a new class of materials with outstanding properties and with many possible applications, spanning from photovoltaics to photonics. Semiconductor physics has been amongst the most exciting and rapidly advancing areas of physics in the past decades. Its study has been fruitful both for fundamental achievements (Nobel prizes for quantum tunneling in 1973, quantum Hall effect in 1985, and for fractional quantum Hall effect in 1998), and technological advances (Nobel prizes for transistor in 1956, semiconductor heterostructures in 2000, CCD in 2009, graphene in 2010, blue LED in 2014). 
Electronics, optoelectronics, photovoltaics, are all based on semiconductor structures and since engineering of their electronic properties can now be achieved at the atomic level, totally new possibilities have resulted, opening the route to applications into new fields, like quantum information and telecommunication technologies. This has led to a high demand for scientists with research experience in semiconductor physics and technology; PhD in semiconductor physics opens job possibilities in fundamental and applied research both in academia and cutting-edge industry.