Aware of the importance of physics for the development of economy and industry, Penza Industrial Institute established the Department of Physics in 1943. Over the years, the department has been reinforcing its teaching and research staff, advancing laboratories, modernising equipment, undertaking research and participating in national and international scientific events. All these contribute to training specialists with necessary theoretical knowledge and practical skills in the field of physics.

Promising interdisciplinary research involves students. In addition to studies, they take an active part in maintaining scientific cooperation between the department and major Russian and international centres. The department supervises the student research society “Problems of modern physics” to provide students with methods and means of applying high technologies and solving R&D problems, to foster creativity among its participants through research and to attract gifted students to purposeful research in various scientific teams. Students work on the R&D products, including a multichannel acoustic device for early detecting of emerged microcracks in metal structures, a bipolar polarisation sensor of seismoacoustic activity in the Earth’s crust, an ultrasonic chamber of variable length for acoustic interferometer, a laboratory setup for studying alloys with mechanical shape memory effect, etc.

Over the past years, the research team “Electronic processes in low-dimensional systems” created at the department has been fruitfully functioning. Nowadays, the department implements the project “Tunnel transport and optical properties of quasi-zero and quasi-two-dimensional structures in electric field”, which leads to developing nanoelectronic devices with controlled optical and transport properties based on tunnelling effects (i.e. tunnel diodes, photoelectric converters, chemical and biological sensors, lasers on impurity transitions, IR photodetectors with controlled characteristics).

The department takes pride in the following inventions: an ultrasonic device for testing engine oils using acoustic interferometer method; a portable device for early testing of emerged microcracks in metal structures using acoustic emission method; a portable two-channel device for detecting and localising microdefects in machine parts and structures using acoustic emission method; a device for determining Young’s modulus by exciting natural vibrations of thin plates and rods forming an oscillatory system with an attached mass. Every year, the results of research are presented by the department at international conferences and symposia. The range of publications covers the leading Russian and foreign scientific journals.

DEGREE PROGRAMMES

Bachelor

     Physics: Condensed Matter Physics
     Physics: Management in Research and High Technology

Master

     Physics: Condensed Matter Physics

Post-graduate

     Semiconductor Physics
     Instruments and Methods of Measurement
     Physics and Astronomy

RESEARCH

Research topics

•    Electronic processes in low-dimensional systems with impurity centres
•    Methods and means of analogue-digital conversion of parameters in variable electrical signals
•    Dissipative tunnelling physics
•    Physics of interaction between atomic particles and solid surface
•    Application of Hall sensors to study structure of microwave electromagnetic field
•    Methods and means of analogue-digital conversion of non-electrical quantities
•    Quality management in regional innovation systems

Collaboration

Centre for Advanced Nanotechnology (Canada)
Department of Theoretical Physics, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology
Faculty of Physics, M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University
Joint Institute for Chemical Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences
Institute for Theoretical Physics (Netherlands)
International Medical Centre in Tokyo (Japan)
N.P. Ogarev Mordovian State University
Research and Production Company AMT&C
Universidade de Satiagode Compostela (Spain)
Universit statale di Bergamo (Italy)
University of Pretoria (Republic of South Africa)
University of Wyoming (USA)
Ulyanovsk State University
Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel)

CONTACTS

Prof. Dr. Mikhail Semenov
Doctor of Physics and Mathematics Sciences, Professor
Head of the Department

40 Krasnaya Street, building 8, office 502
Tel: +7 (8412) 20-83-90
E-mail: physics@pnzgu.ru
Web-page of the Department of Physics (in Russian)