Historically, at the moment of UNIPRESS (High Pressure Research Center of the Polish Academy of Sciences) funding, i.e., in 1972, Semiconductor Laboratory constituted the research base of the Center. It was involved in the studies of narrow gap semiconductors, consisting mainly of the electronic band structure and point defect related phenomena. It was the field successfully developed by the Polish Semiconductor School led by Leonard Sosnowski. The typical compound semiconductors studied from middle of 60-ties to the beginning of 80-ties were InSb and HgTe. Later on the main interest of the Semiconductor Laboratory moved to GaAs, AlGaAs and low dimensional systems based on arsenides. The activity concentrated on electronic band structure, transport effects and on donor dopants exhibiting strong coupling to the crystal lattice (so called DX Centers). Since 1990-92 the main subjected of activity have switched to wide bandgap binaries of GaN, InN, AlN and their alloys. Firstly, their basic properties including electronic band structure, phonons, and point defects were studied experimentally and theoretically. Then, epitaxial growth and light emitting devices in blue range have additionally become the domains of the Laboratory. Main future activity will be related to materials and devices emitting light in ultraviolet range of the spectrum.

Basing on a long tradition of fundamental semiconductor research by means of high pressure techniques, one of the nowadays activity of the Laboratory is devoted to pressure tuning of semiconductor laser diodes.