EP 426 – PHYSICS OF QUANTUM DEVICES

Course offered in:

2014 – 2015 Spring

Instructors:

Prof. Kantimay Das Gupta

Motivation for this course:

Advanced level course on nano/micro scale devices and phenomena. Quantum treatment of electronic devices. Derivation of current in a variety of devices based on fundamental transport and gradient equations.

Pre-requisites:

Expected level by professor: QM1, QM2, Statistical and Thermal Physics. If not atleast EE207 is necessary..

Course Content:

  1. Transport in large and small devices
    • The Boltzmann transport equation (BTE)
    • Using the BTE in simple cases
    • What drives current
  2. Electric potential, electrochemical potential, chemical potential, Fermi level…what are these?
    • The band bending concept
    • The self consistent band bending equations (Poisson-Schrodinger etc)
    • Band bending near surfaces, interfaces
    • MOSFET and the 2dimensional electron gas
  3. Ballistic transport concept
    • Application to 1D channels
    • Quantum Hall effect
    • Single electron transistor
  4. Superconducting devices
    • How a superconductor differs from a normal metal
    • Josephson junction
    • SQUID
  5. A bag of topics..
    • How are mesoscopic or nano-structures made?
    • Using Quantum devices to define the standard Ohm/Volt/Ampere. How and why?
    • Band structure of Si, Ge and GaAs.
    • How shape of the Fermi surface is expected to change with electron concentration. Why metals have more complex fermi surfaces?
    • various regions of the EM spectrum and length scales.

Evaluation:

Class Quiz : 10-15% Mid sem : 25-30% Class Quiz/Term Paper : 20-25% End sem : 30-40%

Quizzes relatively easy compared to midsem and endsem

Lectures:

Difficult to follow instructions but professor encouraged extensive discussion for better understanding. The instructor used his lecture notes (descriptive but not spanning) as a background and explained crucial points on the board. Personal interaction possible due to small strength (40-50).

Difficulty:

5 on a scale 1-5.

Grading Statistics:

Lenient

Grades

Review by – Vivek Saraswat (13d070062@iitb.ac.in)