CHEM 7500-03 / NANO 602 - Structure and Spectroscopy of Nanoscale Materials

Description

The objective of this course is to introduce students to different aspects of the structure of nanoscale materials (crystal, surface, and electronic structure) from the interdisciplinary point of view.

The first part of the course will focus on the surfaces and interfaces, as an integral part of condensed phases, pertaining to nanoscience and nanotechnology. Due to the reduced sizes of nanostructures, surfaces make up a significant portion of nanomaterials, and play an important role in many scientific and technological processes in semiconductor industry, device fabrication, catalysis, and medical diagnosis and treatment. The course will begin with the introduction to some basic terms and concepts related to surfaces and interfaces. The differences between the structure of surface and bulk will be established, and explained in terms of chemical and physical interactions of atoms. Molecular-level description of the surfaces will be correlated with surface thermodynamics and kinetics. These fundamentals will then be used to discuss the design and fabrication of electronic devices, more complex surfaces/interfaces, and selected case studies.

 The second part of the course will deal with the electronic structure of nanoscale materials and different spectroscopic studies of the nanoscale materials, with an emphasis on single nanostructure measurements. The electronic structure of nanomaterials will be reviewed and compared to their bulk counterparts. We will then discuss the interaction of electro-magnetic radiation and matter. Different spectroscopic and spectro-microscopic experimental methodologies will be introduced, and their use and limitations in studying particular nanoscale systems.