Nanoscience and Nanotechnology I

Nanoscience sits at the point where quantum mechanics, condensed matter, chemistry, and biology stop behaving like separate subjects, and this course is a graduate-level survey of how matter actually works once you shrink it to the scale where surface effects, confinement, and single-atom manipulation dominate. You'll work through ten homework sets, a term project with a written report and presentation, and a final essay, building up from characterization tools (STM, AFM, TEM/SEM) to the physics of nanowires, carbon nanotubes, graphene, and spintronic transport. It's a foundation course for the nanotech track — assumes you already have solid quantum and solid-state background, and sets you up for the lab-heavy PHYS 521 sequel and any research group working on low-dimensional systems.