Characterization of Materials. 3 credits, 3 contact hours

Catalog description

Prerequisites: Undergraduate classes covering physics, chemistry, thermodynamics, and heat and mass transfer, or permission of the instructor. The course is designed to introduce graduate students in chemical and materials engineering, and other engineering and science disciplines, to fundamentals and theory of different types of materials characterization tools. Methods and techniques necessary to understand and quantify diverse materials properties will be discussed. As important for many methods, basic principles of interaction of radiation and particle beams with matter will be studied. Topics include, but are not limited to: Diffraction methods; imaging via optical, scanning, transmission electron, scanning tunnelling, and field ion microscopy; microanalysis and spectroscopy, including energy dispersive, wavelength dispersive, Auger methods; secondary ion mass spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy; materials preparation for analysis, including electron, ion growth, sputtering; thermal analysis: DTA, DSC; and depending on the availability and functionality of equipment, lab visits and demonstrations will be scheduled to the class to discuss some case studies.