Module Identifier PH33510  
Module Title CRYSTALLINE SOLID STATE PHYSICS  
Academic Year 2002/2003  
Co-ordinator Professor Neville Greaves  
Semester Semester 1  
Other staff Dr Rudolf Winter  
Pre-Requisite PH21510 , PH22010 , PH23010  
Course delivery Lecture   20 lectures  
  Seminars / Tutorials   2 workshops  
Assessment Semester Exam   End of semester examinations   80%  
  Semester Assessment   Course Work: Assessed homework Deadline (by week of Semester): Week 6   10%  
  Semester Assessment   Course Work: Assessed homework Deadline (by week of Semester): Week 11   10%  

Learning outcomes

After taking this module students should be able to:

Brief description

The physics of crystalline materials has had a major impact on present day society. Semiconductors, metals and magnetic materials have all found particular use in microcomputers, displays and telecommunications. This module on crystalline solid state physics falls into three main sections. The fist lays the ground work and introduces the main concepts used in crystallography viz. atomic structure, reciprocal space, translational invariance and scattering. The second deals with the vibrational and electronic structure and the way these relate to the atomic structure and form the basis for our understanding of thermal, electrical and optical properties of crystalline materials. The third part extends these ideas further to include the properties of metals, magnetic materials and superconductors.

Content

PROBING THE STRUCTURE OF CRYSTALLINE SOLIDS
Bragg's Law and Wavenumber. Laue, Single Crystal and Powder Diffraction. Pros and cons of X-rays, neutrinos and electrons as probes of periodic structures.

3 DIMENSIONAL GEOMETRY OF CRYSTALS
Crystal lattice, Unit Cell, Translational Invariance and Basis. Reciprocal Space. Scattering of a Plane Wave by a crystalline solid, Laue Conditions and Bragg's Law. Miller Indices, Crystal Planes and Stereograms. Bravais lattices and common cubic structures. Wigner-Seitz Cells and Brillouin Zones for cubic structures. Structure Factor, Atomic Form Factor and Crystallography.

VIBRATIONAL PROPERTIES OF SOLIDS
Atomic Vibrations, Phonons, Bose-Einstein statistics. Experimental probes - inelastic neutron and light Scattering. Dispersion Relations for a monatomic lattice. Phonon Modes within the Brillouin Zone. Diatomic lattice, optic and acoustic modes, Raman and Brillouin Scattering. Vibrational Density of States and Debye Model versus spectra for cubic structures.

ELECTRONIC BAND THEORY
Free electron gas, Electronic Density of States, Fermi-Dirac statistics and transport in simple cubic metals. Nearly Free Electron Model, Band Structure, Metals and Insulators. Fermi Surface of cubic metals and its measurement (De Haas-van Alphen Effect). Optical and Electrical properties of Metals.

MAGNETISM
Magnetisation, susceptibility and diamagnetism. Permanent electronic dipoles, paramagnetism and electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR). Ideal magnetic gas and Curie-Weiss Law. Exchange interaction, ferromagnetism and antiferromagnetism. Nuclear dipoles and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR).

SUPERCONDUCTIVITY
Tc and Bc and the Meissner Effect. Type I and Type II superconductors. London Equation. Phonon exchange, Cooper pairs and superconductivity energy gaps. Flux quantisation and Josephson Effect, quantum interference and SQUIDS. Metal oxide High Tc superconductors.

Reading Lists

Books
** Recommended Text
HP Myers. Introductory Solid State Physics. Taylor & Francis
** Supplementary Text
SR Elliott. The Physics and Chemistry of Solids. Wiley