Useful Links

These are direct links to several journals. If you can link to them also through the OSU Library Proxy Server, you will have free access to all articles (ONID login required from off campus). If you cannot access a journal through the Proxy Server, request the article through interlibrary loan. This service is paid for by your tuition and/or fees.

• Nature Materials is a monthly journal devoted to the latest-breaking news on new materials.

• Nanoletters is a monthly journal specifically addressing physics and chemistry, of nanomaterials and nanodevices.

• Physical Review Online. Of the Phys. Rev. journals, Phys. Rev. B is comprehensive and devoted to solid state physics. Also look at Phys. Rev X (interdisciplinary, high-profile), Physical Review Applied (materials, nanoscience, surfaces and interfaces, devices etc), Phys. Rev Materials (materials).

• Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics is a new addition to the “Annual Review” Series of journals (also Mat. Sci , Chemistry etc). Reviews of Modern Physics is another good place to find summaries of quickly-developing fields by very respected authors.

• Open MX website. You will use OpenMX for your band structure calculations.
• Band structures of elements a periodic table that shows band structures of all the elements in their solid forms.
• Kronig-Penney model Applet. This is an alternative approach to finding molecular wave functions. It solves the Schroedinger eigenvalue equation in a periodic, square potential well system.
• The Materials Project Explore many materials, including band structure, phase diagrams and more. CIF files available. (You have to register).

• "The Orbitron" - Atomic and molecular orbitals from Sheffield University. Nice pictures and animations. (Firefox and chrome block the “flash” app, so you have to override and “allow” its use. Or use Internet Explorer browser)

• Jmol and JSmol are open-source software apps to visualize crystal structures. The images in the “orbitron” page from teh Sheffield site use JSmol.

• Basic tutorial on unit cells, lattices, symmetry - Cambridge University DoITPoMS.

• YouTube video (6 min) about conventional unit cells for cubic crystals. Note, these are not the same as primitive unit cells.

• Basic tutorial on Brillouin zone construction for 2-D square & hexagonal lattice lattice - Cambridge University DoITPoMS.

• Structure information for the perovskite, pyrochlore, rutile & spinel structures

• NRL Center for Materials Research and Technology. n excellent site with many structures and descriptions.

• Bilbao crystal server. Find space groups and reciprocal lattices.

• Crystallographic and Crystallochemical Database for Minerals and their Structural Analogues. Maintained by the Russian Academy of Sciences. Space groups, Wyckoff positions, diffraction info for minerals. Searchable periodic table.

• Crystallography Open Data Base - several cif files.

• Wikipedia article on 3D Brillouin zones is useful for choosing paths in k-space.

• Introduction to semiconductors - Cambridge University DoITPoMS.
• Compilation of semiconductor properties from the Ioffe Institute.
• Compilation of II-VI (and other) semiconductor properties by D. W. Palmer.
• Principles of Semiconductors is a good web book by Bart Van Zeghbroeck of Univ. Colorado. Google it; if I paste the link pasted in this wiki, an error results, so search for it.

• Dispersion relations and animations of phonon modes in several different crystals.

• Mathematica has some nice demos (for everything!); here's a Debye specific heat calculator

• Java applet with interactive features demonstrating acoustic and optic phonon modes of diatomic chain (requires java; was a good site before, but didn't work well for me in 2019).

• Webelements is a great periodic table with easy-to-access properties, electron configurations, group and period trends, etc.

• Data base of Fermi surface pictures.

• Fundamental constants from NIST.

• Solid state simulations from Cornell University. Drude model is nice.

• Light in a periodic system:Photonic crystals research by MIT group - nice pictures.

• another list of links from a similar course.
• The Physics and Chemistry of Color: the 15 Causes of Color by Kurt Nassau (Wiley-Interscience, 2001) is a fascinating book that talks about why things are the colors they are. In the library, & you can browse bits of it on Amazon.com

• Investigating thin film interference with a digital camera, Atkins & Elliot, Am. J. Phys. 78, 1248 (2010) talks about what color a film should be based on its thickness and therefore how interference affects color.

Mathematica (by Wolfram) is one of several extremely powerful software programs that is useful for simple visualization of functions, computer-aided algebra, and is also a vehicle for very sophisticated programming. I highly recommend you use it for classwork, for research and for fun. As long as you are an OSU student, you are permitted a free copy for use on your own computer. Wolfram has extensive documentation and tutorials. Try something very basic like “the first 10 minutes with Mathematica” - you don't need much more.

Here are some Mathematica notebooks that I wrote that are relevant to PH575.

• visualization of spherical harmonics
• visualization of s and p orbitals - real combinations of spherical harmonics
• molecular orbitals - MOs of 5 atoms in a line. Use s or p, and pick mode.
• 2D square lattice dispersion
• starter for matrices - create a matrix, find eigenvalues etc.

Not part of the course, but watch these for relevant topics …

• The physics Solid State and Optics Seminar meets W 4:00 - 5:00 pm in WGR 304.
• The Materials Science Seminar meets Th 3:00 - 4:00 pm in Rogers 226.
• The Physics Colloquium meets M 4:00 - 5:00 pm in WGR 116.