All of this background history is necessary in order to appreciate the important contributions Chandrasekhar has made to this field. That is, once people realized that these “bologna and cheese” heterostructures could be reliably constructed, a whole bunch of new questions arose. This is where Chandrasekhar’s research comes into play. “We don’t really ‘grow’ the devices…or even the materials,” she stipulates. “The work we do is on studying the properties of these devices: how to control them, what drives them, how far you can be off and still be within your range.”

Chandrasekhar and Uma Venkateswaran, her graduate collaborator, designed and built a low-temperature pressure cell to conduct optical studies on semiconductor heterostructures. The device can apply pressures up to 1 million pounds per square inch, changing the energy levels so that the researchers can study the properties of these materials.

The early semiconductors were all inorganic materials (such as silicon), of which there is a limited supply. Chandrasekhar is now looking at organic semiconductors, which present many exciting possibilities.