Solid State Physics

Role: Instructor

The topics covered in this course include: bonding in solids, thermal and electrical properties of solids, energy bands, imperfections in solids, properties of semiconductors and insulators.

This course deals with crystalline solids and is intended to provide students with basic physical concepts and mathematical tools used to describe solids. The course deals with groups of materials, as in the periodic table, in terms of their structure, electronic, optical, and thermal properties. Specific objectives are:

  • To show how crystal symmetry leads to substantial mathematical simplifications when dealing with solids.
  • To describe basic experimental measurements, to show typical data sets and to compare these with theory.

Topics included in PHYS 4150:

  1. Free electron metals: Drude theory (classical), Sommerfeld theory (quantum mechanical)
  2. The static crystal lattice: Crystal lattices, the reciprocal lattice, X-ray diffraction
  3. Electrons in a static lattice: Bloch’s theorem, nearly free electrons (NFE), band structure, Brillouin zones

Course Materials

Course Outline
Summary slides

Drude Model

A1-Drude Intro
A2-DC Conductivity
A3-Hall Effect
A4-AC Conductivity
A5-Thermal conductivity

Sommerfeld Model

B1-Sommerfeld T0
B2-Sommerfeld T

Crystal Lattice

C1-Crystal lattice
C2-Reciprocal lattice

Diffraction

D1-Diffraction

Electron in a Crystal Lattice

E1-Electrons in lattice
E2-Bloch’s Theorem
E3-NFEM
E4-Tight binding
E5-Semi-classical model

Lattice Dynamics

F1-Lattice dynamics
F2-Dynamical Matrix
F3-Phonon dispersion curves
F4-Phonons in 3D
F5-Quantum lattice

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