OREANDA-NEWS. On 27 July 2009 was announced, that the Prize Committee of Nanotechnology International Prize RUSNANOPRIZE-2009 in NanoElectronics awarded the Prize to Prof. Leonid Keldysh (Russia) and Prof. Alfred Yi Cho (USA) for contribution to the research and development of semiconductor superlattices and technology of the molecular beam epitaxy. RIBER Company (France) will also receive the Prize symbol for their development of molecular beam epitaxy equipment.

Prof. Leonid Keldysh, a prominent Russian theoretical physicist working at the Lebedev Institute of Physics, published first theoretical papers as early as 1962, which demonstrated the application potential of periodic semiconductor nanostructures in electronics and optoelectronics. Researches by Prof. Keldysh gave an impetus to researchers and technologists to develop growing technology for nanostructures with an atomic precision. In the late sixties and early seventies, Prof. Alfred Yi Cho, a leading scientist of Bell Laboratories, developed the fundamentals of this technology, subsequently named “molecular beam epitaxy”.

Nowadays the molecular beam epitaxy is widely used in the manufacturing of ultra-high speed elements for such devices as cellular phones, CD players, computing systems, fiber optic networks, radars, satellite communication networks, television, etc.

The RUSNANOPRIZE Awarding Ceremony will take place in Moscow on 6 October 2009, as part of the plenary session of the Second International Nanotechnology Forum. The Prize fund in 2009 makes three million rubles, which will be equally shared between Prof. Leonid Keldysh and Prof. Alfred Yi Cho. The Prize Committee of Nanotechnology International Prize RUSNANOPRIZE-2009 in NanoElectronics is co-chaired by Anatoly Chubais, RUSNANO CEO, and Zhores Alferov, Nobel Prize Laureate and Vice President of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

The Prize voting results were independently verified by Ernst & Young, the official partner of the Nanotechnology International Prize RUSNANOPRIZE-2009.