The main task of Department is structural, optical and electrical characterization of materials and devices. There are several groups of characterization methods used here.

They are especially methods based on electron microscopy techniques: TEM - Transmission Electron Microscopy (and HRTEM - High Resolution TEM), SEM - Scaning Electron Microscopy and FIB - Focused Ion Beam, which is applied for preparation of TEM specimens, along with classical technique of ion milling. The possessed Helios NanoLab Dual Beam FIB allows also for multiple types of nanoprocessing: deposition and etching of metals, dielectrics, polymers, etc.

Photovoltaic response measurements, minority carrier effective lifetime measurements with use of microwave photoconductance decay following a laser pulse, thermovision investigations in the range of infrared radiation with use of thermovision camera, as well as Optical Beam-Induced Current (OBIC) method, constitute another group of characterization techniques.

Other techniques applied for characterization, are very low current and small capacitance measurements of semiconductor devices (especially with gated diodes), Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) and tunneling microscope (STM) investigations, high pressure processing at high temperatures (HT-HP).

Department of Materials and Semiconductor Structures Research is located in the main campus of the Institute of Electron Technology (ITE) in Warsaw, Poland. The Department is a part of the Centre of Nanophotonics at the Institute of Electron Technology.

Three European Union projects (GSQ, SODAMOS, METAMOS) as well as other international and multiple national projects are and were realized in our Department. Results of investigations were published in hundreds of publications in international scientific journals and conference proceedings.