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Additional material

This page is the space for additional resources which may prove to be of some use and/or interest for curious individuals.

Websites

  • Open Solid State Notes from Delft University of Technology: a site after my own heart, given the usage of the same reference text and the same static site generator. Moreover, the open-source nature of their project (CC BY-SA 4.0) is the reason much of the content here exists. 2021 is the first year that this course will run, and the dutiful preparation of content of a high calibre has allowed for reproduction of content, with edits running the gamut from a light to touch to utter destruction.
  • Britney Spears' Guide to Semiconductor Physics: a relic of the time. A viral website before the phrase existed, the site does not hold up to modern standards - especially in light of the recent details of the singer's probate conservatorship - but sports surprisingly high-quality quality content relating to semiconductors, especially semiconductor lasers.

Texts

  • Quantum Mechanics and Quantum and Atom Optics by Daniel A. Steck from the University of Oregon: marvellous books that have been diligently curated and provide excellent reading for both revision and learning new content. Note that the Quantum and Atom Optics text contains relevant content and includes some of the most interesting material one is likely to encounter in the realm of quantum mechanics1, but it pitched at the graduate level and assumed knowledge of material not taught in the UTAS undergraduate program. I still think it worthwhile as an additional resource, but don't fret if it becomes a bit hard to follow once it gets into the weeds.

Previous course notes

Solid-state physics at UTAS is taught every odd-numbered year, with the previous course outing having been taught by Andrew Cole and Ross Turner for solid-state and semiconductor physics respectively. The notes from this course are posted here as a reference, but it should be emphasised that the course structure is vastly different, and consequently one's mileage may vary.

Solid-state physics

  • Week 1: The lectures from week 1 of the Solid State Physics sequence, covering the introduction to solid state physics; the definition of a crystal; close-packed crystal structures; the Wigner-Seitz primitive cell; calculation of cohesive energy for an ionic solid; introduction to covalent and metallic solids.
  • Week 2 - Lectures from week 2 of solid state: diffraction and scattering of x-rays, neutrons, and electrons by crystals. Bragg's Law, reciprocal lattices, Brillouin zones. Mechanical properties of solids: compressibility, stress, strain, dilation. Bulk modulus, shearing, and Poisson's ratio. Mechanical wave propagation.
  • Week 3 - Crystal vibrations in the quantum limit; phonons. Monatomic and diatomic linear chains, and the optical vs. acoustic wave modes; phonon momentum. Thermal properties of solids. The law of Dulong & Petit, the Einstein model for state density, and the Debye model for specific heat.
  • Week 4 - Introduction to Electrons in solids: the classical free electron picture, drift velocity and relaxation time. The Drude model for conductivity. The Fermi energy. Heat capacity of electrons, resistivity, conductivity, Ohm's Law, electron-phonon scattering. Magnetism: the Hall effect; the Weidemann-Franz law.
  • Week 5 - Updates to electrons in solids: Umklapp scattering and resistivity; the Lorenz number of a metal. Magnetism: the Hall effect, magnetic susceptibility, diamagnetism, paramagnetism, Brillouin functions, and the Curie law for paramagnetism. Spontaneous magnetization, the Curie temperature, and the Weiss field (Exchange torque).

Semiconductor physics

  • Section 1: Introduction to band theory looking at the Bloch Theorem, Kronig-Penney Model and the Empty Lattice Approximation. These are used to explain the electrical properties of solids, including conductors, insulator and simple intrinsic semiconductors.
  • Section 2: Conduction properties of Semiconductors. This module looks at how the Fermi-Dirac distribution describes the changing conductivity of intrinsic semiconductors with temperature and explore how doping the crystal lattice with other atoms affects the conductivity. 
  • Section 3: PN Junctions and diodes. A brief look at some of the practical applications of semiconductors including light-emitting diodes and photo detectors. This includes a detailed description of the electrical behaviour of pn-junctions, crystals with one half doped with one type of atom and the other half with atoms from different group.

  1. and I am not just saying this because my research has been in this area, it is objectively true! ↩

Last update: August 11, 2023

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