Lessons from Nanoscience: A Lecture Notes Series – serie

This book aims to serve as a practical guide for novices to design and conduct measurements of thermal properties at the nanoscale using electrothermal techniques. An outgrowth of the authors’ tutorials for new graduate students in their own labs, it includes practical details on measurement design and selection, sensitivity and uncertainty analysis, and pitfalls and verifications. The information is particularly helpful for someone setting up their own experiment for the first time. The book emphasizes the integration of thermal analysis with practical experimental considerations, in order to design an experiment for best sensitivity and to configure the laboratory instruments accordingly. The focus is on the measurements of thermal conductivity, though thermal diffusivity and thermal boundary resistance (thermal contact resistance) are also briefly covered, and many of the principles can be generalized to other challenging thermal measurements.The reader is only expected to have the basic familiarity with electrical instruments typical of a university graduate in science or engineering, and an acquaintance with the elementary laws of heat transfer by conduction, convection, and radiation.

The Romans built enduring bridges well before Newton came along, armed simply with a working knowledge of mechanics and materials. In contrast, today's bridge building is an elaborate enterprise involving CAD tools, composite materials and acoustic imaging. When technology is pushed to its limits, a working knowledge proves inadequate, and an in-depth understanding of core physical principles, both macroscopic and microscopic, top-down vs bottom-up, becomes essential.We find ourselves today at a similar crossroad in semiconductor device technology, where a working knowledge of solid state electronics is no longer enough. Faced with the prohibitive cost of computing and the slowdown of chip manufacturing, device scaling and the global supply chain, the semiconductor industry is forced to explore alternate platforms such as 2-D materials, spintronics, analog processing and quantum engineering.This book combines top-down classical device physics with bottom-up quantum transport in a single venue to provide the basis for such a scientific exploration. It is essential, easy reading for beginning undergraduate and practicing graduate students, physicists unfamiliar with device engineering and engineers untrained in quantum physics. With just a modest pre-requisite of freshman maths, the book works quickly through key concepts in quantum physics, Matlab exercises and original homeworks, to cover a wide range of topics from chemical bonding to Hofstader butterflies, domain walls to Chern insulators, solar cells to photodiodes, FinFETs to Majorana fermions. For the practicing device engineer, it provides new concepts such as the quantum of resistance, while for the practicing quantum physicist, it provides new contexts such as the tunnel transistor.

The Romans built enduring bridges well before Newton came along, armed simply with a working knowledge of mechanics and materials. In contrast, today's bridge building is an elaborate enterprise involving CAD tools, composite materials and acoustic imaging. When technology is pushed to its limits, a working knowledge proves inadequate, and an in-depth understanding of core physical principles, both macroscopic and microscopic, top-down vs bottom-up, becomes essential.We find ourselves today at a similar crossroad in semiconductor device technology, where a working knowledge of solid state electronics is no longer enough. Faced with the prohibitive cost of computing and the slowdown of chip manufacturing, device scaling and the global supply chain, the semiconductor industry is forced to explore alternate platforms such as 2-D materials, spintronics, analog processing and quantum engineering.This book combines top-down classical device physics with bottom-up quantum transport in a single venue to provide the basis for such a scientific exploration. It is essential, easy reading for beginning undergraduate and practicing graduate students, physicists unfamiliar with device engineering and engineers untrained in quantum physics. With just a modest pre-requisite of freshman maths, the book works quickly through key concepts in quantum physics, Matlab exercises and original homeworks, to cover a wide range of topics from chemical bonding to Hofstader butterflies, domain walls to Chern insulators, solar cells to photodiodes, FinFETs to Majorana fermions. For the practicing device engineer, it provides new concepts such as the quantum of resistance, while for the practicing quantum physicist, it provides new contexts such as the tunnel transistor.

"The author has made this book accessible to many readers interested in learning about the fascinating world of nanotechnology by limiting the necessary background for understanding the book … The book takes a very complex subject and makes very clear explanations, with many illustrations, that will give the reader an opportunity to understand these, oftentimes, counterintuitive concepts. Understanding these concepts allows one to more fully appreciate the sophistication of many of today’s electronic devices."IEEE Electrical Insulation MagazineEveryone is familiar with the amazing performance of a modern smartphone, powered by a billion-plus nanotransistors, each having an active region that is barely a few hundred atoms long. The same amazing technology has also led to a deeper understanding of the nature of current flow and heat dissipation on an atomic scale which is of broad relevance to the general problems of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics that pervade many different fields.This book is based on a set of two online courses originally offered in 2012 on nanoHUB-U and more recently in 2015 on edX. In preparing the second edition the author decided to split it into parts A and B titled Basic Concepts and Quantum Transport respectively, along the lines of the two courses. A list of available video lectures corresponding to different sections of this volume is provided upfront.To make these lectures accessible to anyone in any branch of science or engineering, the author assume very little background beyond linear algebra and differential equations. However, the author will be discussing advanced concepts that should be of interest even to specialists, who are encouraged to look at his earlier books for additional technical details.

"The author has made this book accessible to many readers interested in learning about the fascinating world of nanotechnology by limiting the necessary background for understanding the book … The book takes a very complex subject and makes very clear explanations, with many illustrations, that will give the reader an opportunity to understand these, oftentimes, counterintuitive concepts. Understanding these concepts allows one to more fully appreciate the sophistication of many of today’s electronic devices."IEEE Electrical Insulation MagazineEveryone is familiar with the amazing performance of a modern smartphone, powered by a billion-plus nanotransistors, each having an active region that is barely a few hundred atoms long. The same amazing technology has also led to a deeper understanding of the nature of current flow and heat dissipation on an atomic scale which is of broad relevance to the general problems of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics that pervade many different fields.This book is based on a set of two online courses originally offered in 2012 on nanoHUB-U and more recently in 2015 on edX. In preparing the second edition the author decided to split it into parts A and B titled Basic Concepts and Quantum Transport respectively, along the lines of the two courses. A list of available video lectures corresponding to different sections of this volume is provided upfront.To make these lectures accessible to anyone in any branch of science or engineering, the author assume very little background beyond linear algebra and differential equations. However, the author will be discussing advanced concepts that should be of interest even to specialists, who are encouraged to look at his earlier books for additional technical details.

"The author has made this book accessible to many readers interested in learning about the fascinating world of nanotechnology by limiting the necessary background for understanding the book … The book takes a very complex subject and makes very clear explanations, with many illustrations, that will give the reader an opportunity to understand these, oftentimes, counterintuitive concepts. Understanding these concepts allows one to more fully appreciate the sophistication of many of today’s electronic devices."IEEE Electrical Insulation MagazineEveryone is familiar with the amazing performance of a modern smartphone, powered by a billion-plus nanotransistors, each having an active region that is barely a few hundred atoms long. The same amazing technology has also led to a deeper understanding of the nature of current flow and heat dissipation on an atomic scale which is of broad relevance to the general problems of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics that pervade many different fields.This book is based on a set of two online courses originally offered in 2012 on nanoHUB-U and more recently in 2015 on edX. In preparing the second edition the author decided to split it into parts A and B titled Basic Concepts and Quantum Transport respectively, along the lines of the two courses. A list of available video lectures corresponding to different sections of this volume is provided upfront.To make these lectures accessible to anyone in any branch of science or engineering, the author assume very little background beyond linear algebra and differential equations. However, the author will be discussing advanced concepts that should be of interest even to specialists, who are encouraged to look at his earlier books for additional technical details.

"The author has made this book accessible to many readers interested in learning about the fascinating world of nanotechnology by limiting the necessary background for understanding the book … The book takes a very complex subject and makes very clear explanations, with many illustrations, that will give the reader an opportunity to understand these, oftentimes, counterintuitive concepts. Understanding these concepts allows one to more fully appreciate the sophistication of many of today’s electronic devices."IEEE Electrical Insulation MagazineEveryone is familiar with the amazing performance of a modern smartphone, powered by a billion-plus nanotransistors, each having an active region that is barely a few hundred atoms long. The same amazing technology has also led to a deeper understanding of the nature of current flow and heat dissipation on an atomic scale which is of broad relevance to the general problems of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics that pervade many different fields.This book is based on a set of two online courses originally offered in 2012 on nanoHUB-U and more recently in 2015 on edX. In preparing the second edition the author decided to split it into parts A and B titled Basic Concepts and Quantum Transport respectively, along the lines of the two courses. A list of available video lectures corresponding to different sections of this volume is provided upfront.To make these lectures accessible to anyone in any branch of science or engineering, the author assume very little background beyond linear algebra and differential equations. However, the author will be discussing advanced concepts that should be of interest even to specialists, who are encouraged to look at his earlier books for additional technical details.

"The author has made this book accessible to many readers interested in learning about the fascinating world of nanotechnology by limiting the necessary background for understanding the book … The book takes a very complex subject and makes very clear explanations, with many illustrations, that will give the reader an opportunity to understand these, oftentimes, counterintuitive concepts. Understanding these concepts allows one to more fully appreciate the sophistication of many of today’s electronic devices."IEEE Electrical Insulation MagazineEveryone is familiar with the amazing performance of a modern smartphone, powered by a billion-plus nanotransistors, each having an active region that is barely a few hundred atoms long. The same amazing technology has also led to a deeper understanding of the nature of current flow and heat dissipation on an atomic scale which is of broad relevance to the general problems of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics that pervade many different fields.This book is based on a set of two online courses originally offered in 2012 on nanoHUB-U and more recently in 2015 on edX. In preparing the second edition the author decided to split it into parts A and B titled Basic Concepts and Quantum Transport respectively, along the lines of the two courses. A list of available video lectures corresponding to different sections of this volume is provided upfront.To make these lectures accessible to anyone in any branch of science or engineering, the author assume very little background beyond linear algebra and differential equations. However, the author will be discussing advanced concepts that should be of interest even to specialists, who are encouraged to look at his earlier books for additional technical details.

"The author has made this book accessible to many readers interested in learning about the fascinating world of nanotechnology by limiting the necessary background for understanding the book … The book takes a very complex subject and makes very clear explanations, with many illustrations, that will give the reader an opportunity to understand these, oftentimes, counterintuitive concepts. Understanding these concepts allows one to more fully appreciate the sophistication of many of today’s electronic devices."IEEE Electrical Insulation MagazineEveryone is familiar with the amazing performance of a modern smartphone, powered by a billion-plus nanotransistors, each having an active region that is barely a few hundred atoms long. The same amazing technology has also led to a deeper understanding of the nature of current flow and heat dissipation on an atomic scale which is of broad relevance to the general problems of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics that pervade many different fields.This book is based on a set of two online courses originally offered in 2012 on nanoHUB-U and more recently in 2015 on edX. In preparing the second edition the author decided to split it into parts A and B titled Basic Concepts and Quantum Transport respectively, along the lines of the two courses. A list of available video lectures corresponding to different sections of this volume is provided upfront.To make these lectures accessible to anyone in any branch of science or engineering, the author assume very little background beyond linear algebra and differential equations. However, the author will be discussing advanced concepts that should be of interest even to specialists, who are encouraged to look at his earlier books for additional technical details.

This book aims to serve as a practical guide for novices to design and conduct measurements of thermal properties at the nanoscale using electrothermal techniques. An outgrowth of the authors’ tutorials for new graduate students in their own labs, it includes practical details on measurement design and selection, sensitivity and uncertainty analysis, and pitfalls and verifications. The information is particularly helpful for someone setting up their own experiment for the first time. The book emphasizes the integration of thermal analysis with practical experimental considerations, in order to design an experiment for best sensitivity and to configure the laboratory instruments accordingly. The focus is on the measurements of thermal conductivity, though thermal diffusivity and thermal boundary resistance (thermal contact resistance) are also briefly covered, and many of the principles can be generalized to other challenging thermal measurements.The reader is only expected to have the basic familiarity with electrical instruments typical of a university graduate in science or engineering, and an acquaintance with the elementary laws of heat transfer by conduction, convection, and radiation.

These lectures are designed to introduce students to the fundamentals of carrier transport in nano-devices using a novel, “bottom up approach” that agrees with traditional methods when devices are large, but which also works for nano-devices. The goal is to help students learn how to think about carrier transport at the nanoscale and also how the bottom up approach provides a new perspective to traditional concepts like mobility and drift-diffusion equations. The lectures are designed for engineers and scientists and others who need a working knowledge of near-equilibrium (“low-field” or “linear”) transport. Applications of the theory and measurement considerations are also addressed. The lectures serve as a starting point to an extensive set of instructional materials available online.

Everyone is familiar with the amazing performance of a modern smartphone, powered by a billion-plus nanotransistors, each having an active region that is barely a few hundred atoms in length.These lecture notes are about a less appreciated by-product of the microelectronics revolution, namely the deeper understanding of current flow, and device operation that it has enabled, which forms the basis for a new approach to transport problems.The book assumes very little background beyond linear algebra and differential equations, and is intended to be accessible to anyone in any branch of science or engineering.

Everyone is familiar with the amazing performance of a modern smartphone, powered by a billion-plus nanotransistors, each having an active region that is barely a few hundred atoms in length.These lecture notes are about a less appreciated by-product of the microelectronics revolution, namely the deeper understanding of current flow, and device operation that it has enabled, which forms the basis for a new approach to transport problems.The book assumes very little background beyond linear algebra and differential equations, and is intended to be accessible to anyone in any branch of science or engineering.

These lectures are designed to introduce students to the fundamentals of carrier transport in nano-devices using a novel, “bottom up approach” that agrees with traditional methods when devices are large, but which also works for nano-devices. The goal is to help students learn how to think about carrier transport at the nanoscale and also how the bottom up approach provides a new perspective to traditional concepts like mobility and drift-diffusion equations. The lectures are designed for engineers and scientists and others who need a working knowledge of near-equilibrium (“low-field” or “linear”) transport. Applications of the theory and measurement considerations are also addressed. The lectures serve as a starting point to an extensive set of instructional materials available online.

These lecture notes provide a detailed treatment of the thermal energy storage and transport by conduction in natural and fabricated structures. Thermal energy in two carriers, i.e. phonons and electrons — are explored from first principles. For solid-state transport, a common Landauer framework is used for heat flow. Issues including the quantum of thermal conductance, ballistic interface resistance, and carrier scattering are elucidated. Bulk material properties, such as thermal and electrical conductivity, are derived from particle transport theories, and the effects of spatial confinement on these properties are established.

These lecture notes provide a detailed treatment of the thermal energy storage and transport by conduction in natural and fabricated structures. Thermal energy in two carriers, i.e. phonons and electrons — are explored from first principles. For solid-state transport, a common Landauer framework is used for heat flow. Issues including the quantum of thermal conductance, ballistic interface resistance, and carrier scattering are elucidated. Bulk material properties, such as thermal and electrical conductivity, are derived from particle transport theories, and the effects of spatial confinement on these properties are established.

The transistor is the key enabler of modern electronics. Progress in transistor scaling has pushed channel lengths to the nanometer regime where traditional approaches to device physics are less and less suitable. These lectures describe a way of understanding MOSFETs and other transistors that is much more suitable than traditional approaches when the critical dimensions are measured in nanometers. It uses a novel, “bottom-up approach” that agrees with traditional methods when devices are large, but that also works for nano-devices. Surprisingly, the final result looks much like the traditional, textbook, transistor models, but the parameters in the equations have simple, clear interpretations at the nanoscale. The objective is to provide readers with an understanding of the essential physics of nanoscale transistors as well as some of the practical technological considerations and fundamental limits. This book is written in a way that is broadly accessible to students with only a very basic knowledge of semiconductor physics and electronic circuits.

The transistor is the key enabler of modern electronics. Progress in transistor scaling has pushed channel lengths to the nanometer regime where traditional approaches to device physics are less and less suitable. These lectures describe a way of understanding MOSFETs and other transistors that is much more suitable than traditional approaches when the critical dimensions are measured in nanometers. It uses a novel, “bottom-up approach” that agrees with traditional methods when devices are large, but that also works for nano-devices. Surprisingly, the final result looks much like the traditional, textbook, transistor models, but the parameters in the equations have simple, clear interpretations at the nanoscale. The objective is to provide readers with an understanding of the essential physics of nanoscale transistors as well as some of the practical technological considerations and fundamental limits. This book is written in a way that is broadly accessible to students with only a very basic knowledge of semiconductor physics and electronic circuits.

The atomic force microscope (AFM) is a highly interdisciplinary instrument that enables measurements of samples in liquid, vacuum or air with unprecedented resolution. The intelligent use of this instrument requires knowledge from many distinct fields of study. These lecture notes aim to provide advanced undergraduates and beginning graduates in all fields of science and engineering with the required knowledge to sensibly use an AFM. Relevant background material is often reviewed in depth and summarized in a pedagogical, self-paced style to provide a fundamental understanding of the scientific principles underlying the use and operation of an AFM. Useful as a study guide to “Fundamentals of AFM”, an online video course available at https://nanohub.org/courses/AFM1/Suitable for Graduate/Undergraduate Independent Reading and Research Course in AFM (with the combination of book and online videos)