Solid State Chemistry

Overview

This course will go over the basics of solid state materials, primarily crystalline solids and describe features and properties of certain specific materials. Some of the basic topics included will be thermodynamics of solids, unit cells, lattice, crystals, symmetry, symmetry groups, defects, x-ray diffraction, microscopy. Following this, the discussion will move to specific materials like binary alloys, oxides, nitrides and sulphides, perovskites, spinels. The course will conclude with a discussion of band theory, band structure, electronic and optical properties.

PREREQUISITES: Basic physical chemistry including thermodynamics, kinetics and quantum chemistry, basic vector analysis and coordinate geometry.

Syllabus

Week 1 : Crystalline and amorphous solids, atomic and molecular solids, thermodynamics of solids, crystallization kinetics, nucleation, synthetic strategy
Week 2  : Unit Cell, Conventional unit cell, primitive unit cell, lattice and basis, Bravais lattices, lattice translation vectors.
Week 3 : Symmetry in crystals, rotations, reflections, inversions, rotoinversions, Schonflies and Hermann-Mauguin notations of symmetries.
Week 4  : Translational symmetry elements, glide plane, screw axis, relevance of symmetries.
Week 5  : Crystal systems, point groups, space groups.
Week 6  : Group notations, Schonflies notations, Hermann-Mauguin notations.
Week 7  : Coordination number, defects and voids in crystals, Schottky and Frenkel defects, interstitials.
Week 8  : Lattice planes, Miller indices, X-ray diffraction, Bragg's law, X-ray difraction, indexing of peaks
Week 9 : Powder X-ray diffractometers, single crystal X-ray diffractometers, X-ray crystallography, electron density maps, electron microscopy techniques.
Week 10  : Crystal structures of elements, alloys, binary compounds, nitrides, sulphides, perovskites, spinels.
Week 11  : Electronic structure of solids, origin of bands, band structure, density of states.
Week 12  : Band structure and electrical conductivity, band gap, optical properties.