Achievement

The required theory course is designed to be an introduction to the theory of inorganic nanostructures and molecular simulation techniques for device applications. The idea is to give an understanding of principles underlying quantum mechanics, statistical physics, many body theory and molecular simulation, and to illustrate how they can be integrated to address scientific problems particularly in nanostructured materials systems. Most of the students in the class have a strong experimental background, and this course helps them extract the underlying physics and chemistry from experiments. In addition, theory students, particularly beginning graduate students, can significantly benefit from the team-taught course that covers a wide spectrum of materials theory and applications. This year a good number of non-IGERT students across several departments also registered for this class.