Elisabeth Bauser

Elisabeth Bauser (née Grobe; 19 April 1934 – 29 September 1996 ) was a German physicist and crystal researcher. She was internationally renowned as a breeder of extremely pure semiconductor crystals. The gallium arsenide and silicon layers she created were characterized by sharp spectra and high mobility.

In the 1970s and 1980s, researchers were working on producing highly efficient thin-film cells. This required a manufacturing process that could produce thin silicon layers of high electronic quality without any volume defects. Elisabeth Bauser was exceptionally successful in growing semiconductor crystals using liquid phase epitaxy. She deposited crystal layers from a slowly cooling solution so that the crystals grew close to thermodynamic equilibrium (i.e. at low supersaturation and relatively low temperatures). The materials produced by Bauser and her team were not only suitable for solar cells, but also for the production of three-dimensional transistor structures. In 1986, IBM Europe honored Bauser with a prize in recognition of her significant contributions to the advancement of material science.

Bauser died on 29 September 1996 after a serious illness. 1986 Prize for Science and Technology of IBM Europe, endowed with 100,000 ECU, together with Manijeh Razeghi from the Laboratoire Central de Recherches Thomson-CSF-France Paris and Bruce A. Joyce from Philips Research Laboratories Redhill, Surrey The Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research honors her memory with the annual Elisabeth Bauser Postdoctoral Fellowship for early-career female researchers.