PERIODO: FEBBRAIO - MARZO 2017


OBIETTIVI DELL’INSEGNAMENTO:
The development of nanotechnology has unambiguously shown that, at the nanoscale, Ohm's law breaks down and electrons can behave in a fully quantum mechanical way. Under appropriate conditions, their wavelike nature makes electronic transport coherent and characterized by peculiar laws, different from both the Statistical Mechanics of macroscopic systems and from the Physics of microscopic systems. These discoveries have paved the way to a research field, called Mesoscopic Physics. The purpose of this course is to provide an introduction to Mesoscopic Systems, pointing out their main physical features, the theoretical modeling, and the experimental realizations. The core of the course will present the Scattering-Matrix formalism introduced by Landauer and Buettiker to account for the quantum coherence effects in an arbitrary mesoscopic system. The final part of the course focusses on carbon-based materials, particularly on nanotubes and graphene, and the mesoscopic effects in their transport properties will be discussed.

PROGRAM:
1. Short survey about Quantum Mechanics
2. Electronic band structures in materials, nanostructures, experimental realizations.
3. Introduction to Mesoscopic Physics, characteristic length-scales and purely mesoscopic effects
4. Modeling mesoscopic systems: the Landauer-Buettiker formula and its applications to quantum wires and Carbon Nanotubes.
5. Generalization to the multi-channel case: conductance quantization and applications to Quantum Point Contacts
6. Carbon-based electronics. Graphene: realization, electronic spectrum and its applications


DURATION: 20 hrs


ORARIO:
(all lectures in Aula 2F, at the Department of Applied Science and Technology of Politecnico, corridor of the door#1)

Friday, February 10, 2017, 10:00-13:00
Wednesday, February 15, 2017, 10:00-13:00
Friday, February 17, 2017, 10:00-13:00
Wednesday, February 22, 2017, 10:00-13:00
Friday, February 24, 2017, 10:00-13:00
Wednesday, March 1, 2017, 10:00-13:00
Friday, March 3, 2017, 10:00-13:00