Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics IAFTeresa Duarte is a PhD student at Fraunhofer IAF, working in the Nitrides Group of the Epitaxy Department. She graduated in Physics Engineering in 2022 at Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal, and worked as a research fellow there until she came to Fraunhofer IAF in 2024.
“What I love about my work is how much I get to do.”
Teresa Duarte is a PhD student at Fraunhofer IAF
At Fraunhofer IAF, Teresa Duarte has found a job where she can take a look behind the scenes and understand how components are created and how they are used.
What does your typical workday at Fraunhofer IAF look like?
My typical day starts with me going into the office, switching from my outside shoes to my lab shoes, which are very comfy, and then checking emails and deciding what I want to do for the day. If I work with the reactor, I’m going into the MOCVD hall checking if everything is okay, starting a growth process, and going up on the reactor every couple of minutes to see if everything is indeed going well. The process is very optimized, but it’s good to be there and to understand what’s going on. Just between this back and forth, I’m going to my office to read papers, attend meetings and prepare presentations, or I’m going into the clean room to do characterization.
What do you love about your work?
What I love about my work is how much I get to do. This is a very unique place: You have so much different equipment with which you can grow, characterize and process wafers all in the same building. To me, it is very exciting to see all steps of the process. Also, I get to work with really nice people, and I think that contributes a lot to have a good day.
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In Portuguese, we say: I like to have my hands in the dough. This is the fun part for me: to be in the lab and to do all the crazy experimental stuff. Before I came here, I worked in fundamental research. Although it is very fun, very intriguing and also very challenging, I had to decide what to do next: stay in this setting or go to industry? Both are very big leaps. Here, it’s a bit of a middleman situation. Also, applied sciences are a bit more rewarding than fundamental research, because timescales are a lot shorter. This is good to keep the motivation up.
What are your plans for the future?
Oh, that’s a hard one. I want to become even more Independent than I am already with my work and equipment, continue learning, grow fantastic epi structures, and obviously Keep annoying all of my coworkers every single day and making them laugh. Yeah. This is the plan.