About the Division

Welcome to the official website of the Division of Solid State Physics (ZFCS), operating within the Institute of Experimental Physics at the Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw. We conduct cutting-edge research in semiconductor physics, quantum optics, spintronics, low-dimensional systems, and novel materials.

Main Research Fields

Secretariat & Contact

Address: Pasteura 5 St., 02-093 Warsaw, Poland
Secretariat: Room 3.78 | mgr Olga Babicka i lic. Ewelina Król
Phone: +48 22 55 32 778
E-mail: zfcs@fuw.edu.pl
Head of the Division: Room 3.77 | prof. dr hab. Andrzej Wysmołek

More information

The beginnings of the Division of Solid State Physics date back to September 1, 1947, when the newly established Chair of Electronics and Radiology was taken by Leonard Sosnowski, who was widely considered to be the founder of the Polish school of semiconductor physics. Professor Leonard Sosnowski was de facto in charge of the Division until his death in 1986. For nearly 20 years, the Division shared laboratories at Hoża str. 69 with the Institute of Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences (until the commissioning of the buildings in Aleja Lotników in the early 1970s).

In 2015, the Department's laboratories were moved to two new buildings: Pasteura str. 5 (the main building of the Faculty of Physics, floors -1 and 3) and Banacha str. 2c (laboratories of the Faculty of Physics in the CeNT building, floor 1).

The directions of research and research successes of the Department are primarily determined by the people (academic teachers, scientific and technical staff, doctoral students, as well as students of both levels of study). The links to the research group's webpages can be found on a list of Division members. On the websites of individual groups, you can look for information about the current directions of the group's research.

The second pillar of research is the apparatus. At the beginning of the 21st century, the Department significantly renewed its equipment base thanks to the support from European Programs (CEPT, CeZaMat, Physics at the Basis of New Technologies, NLTK, NLPQT), to subsidies from the Ministry, the Foundation for Polish Science and individual grants.

In addition to the state-of-the-art scientific equipment owned by research groups, the Division also maintains common equipment.

The most important of them is the cryogenic (helium) infrastructure enabling measurements at low temperatures (usually up to 1.5 K, but even up to 15 mK). The first helium recovery installation with a compressor was built at Hoża at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s thanks to the efforts of Marian Grynberg. In the mid-1990s, the first helium condenser was purchased. Thanks to a grant from the IDUB condensation program, the Division is slowly starting to support measurements in liquid helium for the entire Ochota Campus of the University of Warsaw (mainly NMR spectrometers).

The second very important element of the Department's common equipment is the Nanotech laboratory, which is located on the 1st floor of the CeNT building. There are, among others, a Laboratory of Nanolithography with a cleanroom, a two-chamber high-vacuum MBE machine, apparatus for epitaxy using organometallic compounds (MOCVD) and deposition from the gas phase (ALD), a number of scanning microscopes (AFM, STM, SEM with FIB system), X-ray apparatus XRD, optical and electrical characterization system.

More about the Nanotech Laboratory can be found on their website.


Last change 2026-10-18