PHYS 534: Nanostructures and Nanotechnology II (Spring 2009)
This is a lecture course designed to provide an introduction to the physics of nanostructured systems, their current roles in technology, and the likely future impact of such systems on industry. This course is part of the Sloan Professional Masters in Nanoscale Physics, and should be suitable for first-year graduate students and advanced undergraduates.
Instructor: Prof.
Douglas Natelson
Office: Space Sciences Bldg.,
Room 329
Contact information: x3214,
natelson@rice.edu
Course
meets: MWF, 13:00-13:50pm.,
BL 123
Office hours: My door is open, but you
may want to call ahead to make sure I'm around.
Text:
There is no official text. During the semester I will provide
some lecture notes, and additional material from a variety of
references - see below.
Any student with a disability requiring accommodations in this course is encouraged to contact me after class or during office hours. Additionally, students will need to contact Disability Support Services in the Ley Student Center.
A nanostructure is reasonably defined as an object possessing at
least one critical dimension less than 100 nm in extent. By
that defintition nanostructured systems are all around us all the
time, an are already prevalent in technology. Certainly
molecules fit the bill, and chemists have effectively been performing
nanoscience for many years, albeit with large numbers of
nanostructures . Within the last 20 years, however, a new set
of tools have been developed that allow precise engineering of
materials on scales approaching that of single atoms.
Simultaneously, progress has created an ever-increasing demand
for further miniaturization of existing technology, to the point that
the physical principles on which that technology is based are at the
edge of their validity.
This is a consequence of a
simple yet profound observation: the properties of matter on
the nanometer scale can be vastly different than those on the
macroscopic scale. The borders between physics, chemistry, and
materials science become blurred, and lessons may be learned from
molecular biology, the nanoscience of living things.
When
matter is confined or structured on the nanometer scale, some physics
that matters little in bulk systems may dominate important properties
like electrical conduction, mechanical strength, or equilibrium
structure. The newly relevant physics may have its origins in
classical effects: e.g. the classical charging energy of
a capacitor may exceed room temperature thermal energy if the
capacitor is made small enough. Alternately, new phenomena
may arise statistically from the reduction in N, the number of
atoms, from a thermodynamically large value (1022) to a
small value (100): e.g. as the surface to volume ratio
for a metal cluster becomes very large, the thermodynamically stable
cluster crystal structure can change dramatically. Finally,
quantum mechanical effects (e.g. tunneling, quantum
interference), typically relevant at very short length scales, may
become dominant when system sizes approach the nm
regime.
Understanding the physics of matter structured at the
nm scale is one of the most active areas of research today. The
reasons are clear: access to this new size scale is of
fundamental scientific interest, and the technological importance of
the knowledge gained is potentially astronomical. In many ways this
is reminiscent of solid state physics research in around 1950.
Scientists are making gains in understanding the fundamental
properties of these new systems; simultaneously they are making
laboratory demonstrations of possible technological spin-offs;
industrial adoption of these systems is just getting off the ground;
and forecasting the long-term industrial impact fifty years down the
line is essentially impossible. It's a fairly safe bet,
however, that the physics of nanostructures will have a massive
impact on all of us - as we'll see in this course, it already has.
The style of the course
This course is a continuation of PHYS533. As such, I will not spend the first several weeks of the course on a review of solid state physics, as I did last semester. Rather, we will focus our efforts on three main topics. For each topic, I will provide some background information about the relevant physics. Then we will examine the state-of-the-art in the topic, discussing the importance of nanoscale phenomena. We will then consider future directions in the topic, with an emphasis on relevant physics at the nanometer scale.
The course will consist of three one-hour lectures per week. There will be (roughly) weekly problem sets, given out on Wednesday and due the following Wednesday at the beginning of class. Late work will only be accepted if due to illness or emergency - I want a legitimate excuse.
Understanding the material is at least as important as
getting a numerically or formulaically correct answer to the problem.
If your reasoning isn't obvious, please write little explanations
of what you're doing and why, so partial credit can be assigned in a
reasonable way.
Unsurprisingly, it's rather difficult to come up with lots of homework problems that are really relevant, produce physical insight when solved, and are tractable in a reasonable time frame. You will find that most of the problems I assign are not terribly calculationally intense, and often involve some kind of verbal interpretation of what's going on. Learning to communicate your physical understanding through writing is an important and often neglected skill, so please put some effort into it.
The problem sets are not pledged. I encourage you to discuss the problem sets with each other. You may give each other guidance and advice on problem solving approaches, and you may compare solutions to check your work. However, you may not copy solutions from another student, and the problem sets you submit must be entirely your own work and your own words. If you use a book, journal article, or website, you must cite the relevant material. If you collaborated strongly with other students, cite them as well - this is intellectual honesty.
I'm going to try my best to do the lectures in PowerPoint format, and to make them available over the Web afterward. There will be additional notes and handouts available from the website as well - please check here if you miss class. Furthermore, there will be a few guest lectures during the semester.
For now, I'm planning on the following grading scheme:
50% homework
20% first paper
25% second paper
5% participation
The papers will be pledged. A list
of possible topics will be released later in the semester, along with
details of what I want. These papers must be your own
work - you must cite all sources used, and if you quote someone
else's material, you must clearly indicate that. Treat this
like a real-world document you'd be sending to referees, or like a
technical memo you'd be sending to your boss. There are two
papers because I think it's better to give you a chance to get some
feedback on your writing rather than have it be a "fire and
forget" process. At the beginning of the course, I will
make you sign a document indicating that you understand this.
I know this sounds childish and legalistic, but experience has taught
me that it is, unfortunately, a good idea.
"Participation"
is tough to quantify, but I'd like to try this to encourage you to
ask questions, particularly about the reading assignments. Trust
me - if there's something in the course you find unclear, you're
unlikely to be alone. Talking about these topics with each
other and with me is a better way to learn the material than trying
to do it in a vacuum.
All work on exams and problem sets is subject to the Honor Code. I take the Honor Code seriously, and I expect you to do the same. The homework and final paper situations have been described above. If you have any questions about this, raise them with me at the beginning of the course.
Here is the “Grading and Honor Code policy” statement that all students in this course are required to read, sign, and return to me.
This is a brief outline of topics to be covered in the course. A detailed breakdown as well as a schedule of classes is available here, and will be updated as the semester progresses. We may have to shift gears and rearrange topics, but I hope to get through all this.
I. Overview and introduction
II. Physical optics
Reflection and refraction; Frauenhoffer diffraction; DBR mirrors; lasers
III. Photonics
Optical fibers; semiconductor lasers; nonlinear optical effects; solitons; optical switching; single photon devices
IV. Continuum mechanics
Stress and strain; elasticity; mechanical properties of solids; damped nonideal harmonic oscillator
V. Micro- and nano-electromechanical systems (MEMS and NEMS)
Fabrication; mechanical properties of MEMS and NEMS; accelerometers; motors; gyroscopes
Thermal properties of NEMS; quantum effects; Casimir force; mass detection + charge manipulation; tribology
VI. Fluid mechanics
Dimensional analysis: an example of what physicists can learn from engineers
Inviscid fluids: a primer
Viscous fluids: a primer
VII. Micro/nanofluidics + advanced sensors
Life at low Reynolds number
Capillary forces; electrophoresis+electroosmosis;
Photonics books:
M. Born and E. Wolf. Principles of Optics. Cambridge. Now in its 7th edition. The classic book on optics, though not necessarily that readable.
E. Hecht. Optics. Addison Wesley. A standard textbook on modern optics.
J.D. Joannopolous, R.D. Meade, and J.N. Winn. Photonic Crystals. Supposed to be an excellent book for photonic band gap physics.
L. Novotny and B. Hecht. Principles of Nano-Optics The best book I know relevant to nanophotonics.
MEMS/NEMS books:
M. Gad-el-Hak, The MEMS Handbook, CRC Press. Something like the bible of this area.
M.J. Madou, Fundamentals of Microfabrication, CRC Press. The other bible of this area.
A.N. Cleland, Foundations of Nanomechanics, Springer. Great book from the nano perspective.
Micro/nanofluidics books:
N.-T. Nguyen, Fundamentals and Applications of Microfluidics, Artech.
G. Karniadakis, Microflows and Nanoflows: Fundamentals and Simulation, Springer.
General solid state:
H. Ibach and H. Luth. Solid State Physics, an Introduction to Theory and Experiment. Springer-Verlag. This is a good general solid state physics text, with little experimental sections describing how some of this stuff is actually measured. Its biggest flaw is the number of typographical mistakes in the exercises.
N. Ashcroft and N.D. Mermin. Solid State Physics. The classic graduate text. Excellent, and as readable as any physics book ever is. Too bad that it ends in the mid 1970's....
C. Kittel. Introduction to Solid State Physics. Also a classic, and also very good. Like A&M, the best parts were written 25 years ago, and some of the newer bits feel very tacked-on.
Michael P. Marder. Condensed Matter Physics. Wiley. A very comprehensive newer book, intended as a more current alternative to Ashcroft and Mermin. Seems very good.
P.M. Chaikin and M. Lubensky. Condensed Matter Physics. More recent, and contains a very nice review of statistical mechanics. Selection of topics geared much more toward ``soft'' condensed matter.
W. Harrison. Solid State Theory and Electronic Structure and the Properties of Solids. Pretty good books written by a master of electronic structure calculations. Added benefit: they're quite inexpensive!
D.L. Goodstein. States of Matter, Dover. Excellent - somewhere between a stat mech and a solid state text. It's very readable, and a very good deal since it's also Dover book.
P.M. Chaikin and T.C. Lubensky. Principles of Condensed Matter Physics. Cambridge University. Has very good chapters on phase transitions. Avail. in paperback, so it's not absurdly expensive.
Nanoelectronics and nanoscale physics:
Y. Imry. Introduction to Mesoscopic Physics. Oxford University Press. Very good introduction to many issues relevant to nanoscale physics. Occasionally so elegant as to be cryptic.
D.K. Ferry and S.M. Goodnick. Transport in Nanostructures. Cambridge University Press. Also very good, and quite comprehensive.
S. Datta. Electronic Transport in Mesoscopic Systems. Cambridge University Press. Again, very nice and pedagogical. Much of my treatment of the Landauer-Buttiker approach is taken from here.
S.M. Sze. Physics of Semiconductor Devices. Wiley. The bible of semiconductor device physics. Not really "nano", but an excellent reference for understanding (fairly) modern semiconductor electronics.
C. Weisbuch and B. Vinter. Quantum Semiconductor Structures. Academic Press. A very good resource on heterostructure devices, including quantum well structures.
Photonics resources
http://www.ece.rutgers.edu/~orfanidi/ewa/ - Online textbook from Rutgers: Electromagnetic Waves and Antennas
http://phys.lsu.edu/~jdowling/pbgbib.html - photonics bibliography
http://mph-roadmap.mit.edu/ - MIT photonics roadmap
http://www.pbglink.com/ - photonic band gap resources
http://www-ece.rice.edu/~halas/ - Prof. Halas' group
http://nanophotonics.ece.cornell.edu/ - Cornell's nanophotonics group
MEMS / NEMS resources
http://samizdat.mines.edu/kennett/ - free textbook on continuum mechanics
http://arri.uta.edu/acs/jmireles/MEMSclass/MAINpage.htm - UTA course on MEMS
http://mmadou.eng.uci.edu/Classes/Biomems.html - MEMS with a bio spin
http://www.eng.utah.edu/~gale/mems_class.htm - MEMS class at Utah
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~nano/home.html - Roukes' group at CalTech
Micro/nanofluidics resources
http://faculty.washington.edu/yagerp/microfluidicstutorial/tutorialhome.htm – Microfluidics primer
http://www.ee.duke.edu/research/microfluidics/ - Duke microfluidics
http://thebigone.stanford.edu/ - Steve Quake's group
Nano-based sensing
http://nanosensors.ucsd.edu/ - Ivan Schuller's group @ UCSD
http://www.media.mit.edu/nanoscale/ - Scott Manalis' group @ MIT
http://monet.physik.unibas.ch/nose/ - Basel “Electronic Nose” page
Good physics-related websites
http://www.arxiv.org - Arxiv e-print server - the latest hot results, but no peer review....
http://www.research.ibm.com/disciplines/physics.shtml - IBM Research - lots of neat topics
Last modified 1/07/08 by
natelson@rice.edu.