Simulation and Design of Nanostructures

Catalog description

Introduction to computer simulation techniques and their applications at the physical/life sciences interface. E SC (MATSE) 483 Simulation and Design of Nanostructures (3) Students will learn the simulation techniques and the design rules of nanostructures. Basic concepts of computer modeling will be introduced using quantum and classical approaches. Fundamental physical phenomena encountered in the molecular fields of computational physics, chemistry, and biology will be studied. Applications are drawn from a broad range of fields including soft and condensed matter to build an understanding of nanostructures.The course will assume knowledge and skill developed in the prerequisite courses of PHYS 214 and MATH 230 . Students are expected to combine knowledge from other courses with information presented here to develop sophisticated interpretations and understanding of physical and chemical principles of nanostructures and their design rules.Evaluation methods to be used in this course will be two in-class examinations and one final period examination. The course contains a computer code generation and implementation component. Students will use commercial or educational computer codes (e.g. Matlab, Mathematica, AMBER, CHARMM, VASP, etc.) which are available at our high performance computing clusters (http://gears.aset.psu.edu/hpc/)/ Students will use the computing clusters to perform simulations which are accessible from any classroom or laboratory at Penn State.The principal objectives of the course is to learn the fundamental physics of nanostructures and to design them with computer simulations. This approach starts from classical molecular dynamics that apply on the large scale biological and synthetic assemblies and encompasses quantum mechanics for the molecular and atomic sizes. This course will give a broad scientific picture of simulation techniques in the area of nano-science and technology.