EE 723 – PHYSICS OF NANOELECTRONIC DEVICES 1

Course offered in:

Autumn 2020

Instructors:

Prof Dipankar Saha

Course Content:

Basic Quantum Mechanics principles
Time dependant Schrodinger Equation
Simple Harmonic Oscillator (including Wentzel Kramers Brillouin approximation)
Potential Well systems
Hydrogen atom (complete solution to Schrodinger’s equation)
Angular momemtum
Spin 1/2 systems
Perturbation theory (time dependent and independent)

Initially the instructor had also intended to cover the portion on non-equilibrium statistical mechanics and phonons as a part of this course; however that portion could not be covered due to paucity of time in a compressed semester.
Prerequisites:

A good grasp of first year Quantum Mechanics course (PH107) was necessary to get an understanding of the course especially in the initial stages despite the instructor going over things from scratch. Also, sophomores were allowed to take up the course.

Feedback on Lectures:

In general, the classes were quite interactive with Prof Saha never hesitating to discuss upon certain queries raised by students in the lectures. Having completed the intended course material for the class within the stipulated hours, the doubt sessions often extended more than half an hour beyond the class hours. In the beginning of each lecture, we would get a short recap about the previous lecture before we began the topics reserved for that day. On a flip side, sometimes Prof Saha used to digress a bit while explaining a doubt and things taught previously would be covered again and again. This was in a way beneficial as reiterating things especially related to quantum mechanics ensures that these get entrenched in our memory (some might although find it repetitive).

Feedback on Tutorials, Assignments and Exams:

The assignments composed of questions which were quite often directly from the exercises of the reference book recommended for the course. Assignments were generally not discussed directly, but solutions were provided a few weeks after the submission. Some assignments involved Python programming and some introductory sessions were given to all. Examinations were on the difficult side, with the endsem being a take home one.

This course also involved a course project that had significant weightage to evaluation. That contributed a lot to improve the understanding of the course and some of the topics that were covered in it.

Difficulty:

Moderate to Difficult

Grading Statistics:

Study Material and References:

Primary reference material – “Introductory Quantum Mechanics” by Liboff

The lectures almost completely encompassed the material covered in the reference material; even the One Note files used to teach contained snips from the book. Hence, we never really had to hunt for topics covered, in other references as every derivation shown in class used to be mentioned in the book. Notes were definitely made available at the end of lectures.

Advanced courses that can be taken after this:

This course has a follow-up one EE 727 (Physics of Nanoscale Devices – 2) which covers mainly the portions related to statistical mechanics. Since this course covers basic quantum mechanics which is required to analyze devices, most courses on Solid State Devices can be taken after having done this course or its equivalent (PH 403 and PH 423). This course opens up avenues for further courses in the field of condensed matter physics (PH 418), quantum computing (PH 534) and nanoeletronics (EE 724).

Takeaways from the course:

This course covers the basics of quantum mechanics hence it is quite helpful for understanding further courses in the field of solid state devices.

Review by – Archishman Saha (archishman.saha@gmail.com)

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