From the University of Parma he received the “Laurea” degree (summa cum laude) in Physics in 1990 and the “Diploma” (summa cum laude) in Materials Science and Technology in 1992, and the Ph.D. in Physics in 1996. At the University of Parma he took up a position in 1999 as assistant professor and in 2006 as associate professor.
Since 1990 his scientific activity deals mainly with experimental studies. From 1990 to 1999 he has been working on III-V semiconductors (AlxGa1-xAs and antimony based compounds). Research has been focused on preparation by molecular beam epitaxy and electrical transport characterization of both single layer and low-dimensional structures.
Since 1999 the scientific activity has been carried out on the optical properties of insulating materials (both single crystals and glasses) for optoelectronics, new generation solid-state lasers, and scintillators. Optical properties have been studied mainly by means of high-resolution absorption spectroscopy. Research interests has been focused on:
i) rare earth ions high-resolution spectroscopy in single crystals (e.g. BaY2F8, LiLuF4, YAB, Bi2TeO5) for solid-state lasers: study of the transitions between ground and excited states, analysis of vibronic transitions, doping related effects, crystal-field and superposition models, and hyperfine structure of electronic states;
ii) vibrational properties of the hydroxyl (OH) ion in materials for nonlinear optical applications (mainly crystalline fluorides and oxides), in fluoroperovskites, and silica glasses. Study of anharmonicity effects, electron-phonon coupling, and interaction of the OH ion with defects and impurities;
iii) IR spectroscopy in sol-gel silica glasses doped with rare earths (Ce and Gd as activator and sensitizer ion, respectively) as scintillators for x-ray detection;
iv) IR high-resolution spectroscopy of sol-gel glassceramics containing SnO2 nanocrystals doped with Er and F. The absorption lines of rare earths embedded in nanocrystals has been exploited as a fine probe to monitor crystal-field and local order.
v) the study of optical anisotropy in-Ga2O3 single crystals and the optical characterization of k-Ga2O3 thin films optimized for the fabrication of solar-blind UV photodetectors.
Scientific results have been published on more than one hundred peered reviewed international journals; one Italian patent on sol-gel glasses rare earth doped for scintillators.
