The Laboratory for Material Preparation and Characterization (LPCM) is a group of the Applied Physics Department of the IFGW at Unicamp. Traditionally, we have a strong background in working with x-ray and x-ray diffraction including self-build diffraction instrumentation and x-ray detectors. By now, we are a group of dedicated scientist of all formation levels covering beside the classical structural investigation of matter by x-ray diffraction also the growth and production of epitaxial semiconductors as well as other methods for material characterization. We continue a strong activity in x-ray instrumentation.
Having a multi-disciplinary background, we are open for collaboration outside and inside the physics department in all areas of material science, structural analysis or fabrication.
Group History
Research in Crystallography in IFGW were initiated by Professor Stephenson Caticha-Ellis (1930-2003), born in the small city of Melo, Uruguay. Caticha studied at Glasgow University and the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University (UK) and did internships at the University of Paris (France), the Georgia Institute of Technology and Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (USA). He arrived in Brazil in the late 1960s, where he worked first at the Institute of Atomic Energy of St. Paul (now, IPEN, Institute of Energy and Nuclear Research), especially with neutron diffraction. In the early 1970s, he moved to the Institute of Physics Gleb Wataghin Unicamp, this time using X-ray diffraction.
Professores Stephenson Caticha Ellis e Lisandro Pavie Cardoso em foto de 1984 na porta do LPCM.
A group formed then returned to the study of the crystal defects, particularly using the multiple diffraction X-rays, which was an expert using the bases of the kinematics and dynamics of diffraction X-rays. Thus was created the group of Crystallography of the Institute of Physics Gleb Wataghin, which had the important contribution of several other researchers who passed through it.
After Caticha retired in 1991, with the split of the group, one of the teams – the X-ray diffraction Laboratory (LDRX today LPCM) – continued to explore the potential of multiple diffraction of X-rays and associated techniques particularly for single crystals, thin films and semiconductor epitaxial structures.
From 2017 on, the group includes a new generation of professors. With them, the scope and topics of research widen, but they also engage with the traditional research carried out using x-ray diffraction to solve problems of materials science, physics or related fields.
