Surface Science and Spectroscopy

Surfaces behave nothing like bulk material — the top few atomic layers govern catalysis, adhesion, corrosion, and device interfaces, and probing them requires techniques fundamentally different from what you'd use on a 3D crystal. The course walks through the major families of surface probes (optical, X-ray, charged-particle, scanning probe), focusing on what each technique actually measures, where it fails, and how to read its output, with a term project where you pick techniques to characterize a real material system. As a graduate MSN elective it leans on solid-state and basic spectroscopy background, and pays off directly in thin-film, nanomaterials, and interface-focused research.