Introduction to Nanoscience and Technology

Nanoscience emerged from the analysis of basic physical, chemical and biological phenomena at the atomic to sub-micrometer scale range.

This course first establishes the basic fundamental knowledge and terminology used in nanoscience and nanotechnology. We will then cover advances in new materials, processes, devices and instruments to generate, manipulate and image nanostructures. The following topics will be treated:

The basics:

- Photon: the quantization of light

- de Broglie: Electrons behave like a wave

- Uncertainty Principle

- Wave-function

- Particle-in-a-Box; quantum numbers

- quantum mechanical tunnelling

- Pauli principle

- the structure of atom and molecules; spectroscopy

Seeing and sensing at the nanoscale:

- Scanning probe microscopy (STM, AFM)

- Mechanically controlled break junctions (MCBJ) and transport regimes

- Electron microscopy (TEM, SEM)

- Fluorescence microscopy (Epi, confocal, TIRF, FRET, DNA PAINT)

- Nanopore technology;

Materials at the nanoscale:

Terminology: dimensionality, allotropy, polymorphisms;

Synthesis and preparation of nanomaterials:

- Top down: milling, exfoliation

- Bottom up: CVD, epitaxial growth, arc discharge, laser ablation

- Nanoparticles: colloidal synthesis, characterization and disaggregation strategies, applications (plasmonics, photonics, catalysis, biolabelling)

Carbon, the amazingly diverse building block:

- The family of carbon nanomaterials (0D, 1D, 2D)

- Structure-property relationship in fullerenes, carbon nanotubes, graphene and nanodiamond

- Characterization techniques

- Applications, e.g. Sensing (mass, pressure, bio), actuation, imaging