NANO 500: Introduction to Nanomaterials and Interactions

Below are old lecture notes for the course that was read in the Fall semester of 2006. The current course can be found here.

Fall 2006

Instructor

Boris Veytsman. E-mail: bveytsma@gmu.edu, office: Research I, room 367. Office hours: Wednesdays, 6:30pm (please make an appointment by e-mail beforehand).

Meetings

Research I, room 307. Mondays 6:30pm--9:10pm

Scope

Introduction to nanotechnology. Discussion of the Feynman challenge and its relation to modern science. Atoms and states; a review of quantum mechanics; energy levels; excitations. Includes light absorption and luminescence; covalent and hydrogen bonds in nanostructures and polymers; conformations of polymers; random walks; biological nanostructures and bio-inspired self-assembly. Discussion covers collective effects in nanostructures; one-dimensional lattices; delocalization; electron spectrum; proton excitations. Emphasis on two-dimensional and three-dimensional lattices. Applications to nanostructures of charges, currents, diamagnetics, paramagnetics and ferromagnetics.

Grading

Assignments: 40%; Midterm: 25%; Final: 35% .

The students are invited to attend COS/CMaSC Research Colloquium. A short description of a presentation there earns additional credits towards the final grade. The seminar is free for everybody.

Literature

  1. Schiff, L. I. Quantum Mechanics
  2. Kittel, C. Introduction to Solid State Physics
  3. Davies, J. H. The physics of Low-Dimensional Semiconductors: An Introduction
  4. Handbook of Nanoscience, Engineering and Technology. Ed. by William A. Goddard III, Donald W. Brenner, Sergey Edward Lyshevsky, and Gerald J. Iafrate

Lecture notes

If you have problems reading lecture notes in Acrobat Reader, press Control-K and uncheck "Use Greek Text" in Preferences.

"Acrobat" is so named because of the contortions one must do to get around its bugs. Donald Arseneau, from a posting to comp.text.tex, 2001

  1. Introduction To Nanotechnology
  2. Quantum Mechanics Refreshment
  3. Free Particles. Flow And Current
  4. Quantum Tunneling And Resonance Transmission
  5. A Simple Memory Element And Perturbation Theory
  6. Atoms, Molecules And Forces
  7. Midterm Exam
  8. Electrons And Lattices: The Origin Of Electron Bands
  9. Symmetry And Spin
  10. Statistics Of Fermi Systems I
  11. Statistics Of Fermi Systems II. Density Of States
  12. Simple Theory Of Vertical Quantum Dots
  13. Conductance Of A Quantum Dot
  14. Introduction To Polymer Physics
  15. An Example: Nanoscale Biological Electronic Device
  16. Final Exam

You can earn extra credit points if you find errors in these notes.

The old versions of the course:

Last modified: Sat Aug 25 00:44:04 EDT 2007