ABSTRACT
Nanoscience and nanotechnology are progressing along many
fronts, often from interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary points of
view; the most impressive progress has been made in the area
of semiconductor technology. I remember the beginning of the
nineties, when I did a posdoc formation on optical properties
of semiconductor quantum wells (QWs), the most successful
achievement for light-emitting diode (LED) and laser fabrication
(one should mention here the achievement of high-power lasers
at 808 nm based on GaAs QWs and LEDs-laser diodes based
on GaN QWs, the most successful achievement in the field at
the time). I particularly remember a one-week course given by
Prof. Federico Capasso in the spring of 1992, at the Department
of Physics, University of Florence, where I remained impressed
by his well-known bandgap wavefunction engineering [1] and premonitory quantum design concepts [2] to tailor optical and
electronic properties of quantum heterostructures and conceive
new electronics, his famous double-barrier resonant tunneling diode and optoelectronic devices, and his also well-known quantum cascade infrared laser [3].
