Nanoscience and Nanotechnology I

At the nanoscale, the rules you learned in quantum mechanics and solid-state stop being abstract — electrons start tunneling through barriers, surfaces dominate over bulk, and a carbon sheet one atom thick behaves nothing like graphite. This course walks through how people actually probe and build at that scale (STM/AFM, top-down vs. bottom-up fabrication) and the systems where it matters most: nanotubes, nanowires, graphene, spintronic devices. Expect weekly homework, a term project you'll write up and present, and a final essay; the workload assumes you can pull from quantum, condensed matter, and a bit of chemistry at once, which is why it sits late in the physics curriculum as a bridge into research-level topics and the PHYS 421 follow-up.