Nicolas Grandjean

Grandjean was born in Dijon, France, and is a citizen of that country. He studied at the University of Clermont-Ferrand and Nice-Sophia Antipolis. In 1991, he joined the Solid-State Physics and Solar Energy Laboratory, a division of the French National Center for Scientific Research where he studied physical properties of nanostructures. By 1994 he obtained his Ph.D. and became a CNRS winner. Later on, as a senior research fellow, he worked at the Research Center for Heteroepitaxy and its Applications, a division of Sophia Antipolis. In 2004 he became a tenure professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and in June 2009 assisted in the creation of the Novagan startup, following by becoming a director of the Laboratory of Advanced Semiconductors for Photonics and Electronics where he still serves.[2]

In August 1999 he along with his colleagues have discovered that gallium nitride (GaN) and quantum dots (QDs) can grow due to the 800 °C (1,470 °F) temperature once injected into aluminium nitride (AlN) matrix. By combining those and both molecular beam epitaxy and three molecular monolayers it produces a glowing white light.[3] In September 1996 he and his group have successfully nitrated a sapphire.[4] In December 1999 he used Stranski–Krastanov growth mode for room temperature photoluminescence by combining it with molecular beam epitaxy and gallium/aluminium nitride quantum dots.[5]