X
X
X

X
Courses » Physics of Materials

Physics of Materials

ABOUT THE COURSE

Materials display properties. What is the physics behind these properties? Starting from an electronic or atomic level, how can we arrive at the properties of the materials? These are the questions this course will attempt to answer. Focus will be on electronic properties, but other properties will also be looked at.

1267 students have enrolled already!!

COURSE INSTRUCTOR

Prof. Prathap Haridoss has been a faculty in the Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, IIT Madras, since 2001. He has a B.Tech in Metallurgical Engineering from IIT Madras, and a PhD in Materials Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. Before joining IIT Madras as faculty, he worked as a Senior Scientist at Plug Power a Fuel cell company in Latham New York.  He has published papers in the areas of Carbon nanomaterials, Fuel Cells, Lithium ion batteries, semiconducting nanomaterials, and recycling of electronic waste. He also has three US patents in the area of PEM Fuel cells.


PRE-REQUISITES:
First Year under graduate level of physics and mathematics will be beneficial but is not absolutely necessary. 


CERTIFICATION EXAM

The exam is optional.

Exams will be on 1 November 2015 and 8 November, 2015. 

Time: 1pm-4pm

The list of cities where the exam will be conducted will be available in the registration form.

Registration url: Announcements will be made when the registration form is open for registrations, most likely in July 2015. 

The online registration form has to be filled and the certification exam fee of Rs 1000, needs to be paid.


CERTIFICATE

Certificate will be given to those who register and write the exam. Certificate will have your name, photograph and the score in the final exam. It will also have the logos of NPTEL and IIT Madras. It will also be e-verifiable on the nptel.ac.in/noc website.


SYLLABUS OUTLINE
Properties of materials, thermal expansion, DC and AC techniques to measure electronic conductivity, free electron gas, Drude model for electronic conductivity and for thermal conductivity; Successes and Limitations of the Drude model – The Wiedemann Franz Law; Statistical Mechanics, Maxwell-Boltzmann statistics; history of quantum mechanics; Drude Sommerfeld model, Fermi-Dirac Statistics; Confinement and quantization; calculating density of available states for electrons; Fermi Energy, Fermi Surface, Fermi Temperature; Reciprocal space ; Wigner seitz cells Brillouin zones; Calculating allowed and forbidden energy levels; Description of tight binding approximation, impact of inter atomic spacing on band gaps. Comparison of free electron approximation and tight binding approximation. Effect of pressure on band gaps; Direct Band gap, indirect Band gap semiconductors; Magnetic properties; Electron compounds/Hume Rothery phases. Phonons, Optoelectronic properties; Superconductivity, Bose-Einstein Statistics; Physics of nano scale materials.