Professor Dr Dieter Bimberg

Research Priorities: Nanophysics, nanophotonics, quantum dots, energy-efficient semiconductor lasers, amplifiers, and detectors, QD memories
Dieter Bimberg is a German physicist, materials scientist, and electrical engineer. His research focuses primarily on nanophysics, nanoelectronics, and nanophotonics. He is considered a pioneer in quantum dot technologies and in energy-efficient optical data transfer in computer centres using surface-emitting lasers. He has developed, among other things, the first quantum dot lasers and quantum dot memories, as well as high-frequency single-photon emitters. Quantum dots are core elements in lasers, LEDs, displays, solar cells, memories, and quantum communication.
Dieter Bimberg develops and researches theoretical and experimental novel nanomaterials and nanostructures. These represent the core of ultra-fast edge- and surface-emitting laser diodes, amplifiers, single-photon LEDs for quantum cryptography, and special nanomemories. To start with, he and his team produced quantum dots using vapour phase epitaxy. Quantum dots are tiny pyramids of atoms, which are embedded in a semiconductor material and have quantum effects, which Dieter Bimberg was the first to elucidate. He also theoretically described their production. Billions of quantum dots can fit onto a surface area of one square centimetre and emit light in frequency ranges that conventional semiconductors cannot reach. Lasers based on quantum dots can create flashes that last less than one billionth of a second.
Dieter Bimberg’s working group also revolutionised possible uses of quantum dots for electronic memory media. The aim is to develop a hybrid of DRAM and flash memory, known as nanoflash, with totally new kinds of functionality. This would combine a storage period of more than ten years with a rapid read and write time.
In the last ten years, Bimberg has focused on the energy efficiency of surface-emitting semiconductor lasers as light sources for data transfer in hyper data centres. In 2025, he succeeded in reducing the energy required to transfer data streams of 100 Gb/sec by 80 %.