Introduction to

Nanotechnology
 Plan of Talk
PART-I
•The Importance of GLOBAL FONET
Materials Science Research

•What is Nanomaterial?

•Feynman’s Lecture- some explanations

•Elephant and Flea Problem

•Density of States and its variations

with the Dimension
 Role of Materials & Advancement of Civilization/
Technology
A variety of stone tools

Stone age
A late Bronze Age sword or dagger blade.
Bronze Age
Dome of Florence Cathedral

Water-Wheel
Steel. Age The Iron Bridge
.
.

IT Age

21st century- LASER O

ut D
NL pu
Age of Photonics or Light O
wa t
In ve
pu gu
ide
Photonics is the Science and Technology of t
Generating, Controlling and Detecting Photons (began with the
Invention of the LASER 53 years ago)
Introduction to Miniaturization
 Evolution of Various Disciplines-
Toward Nanoscale Focus
Nanomaterials
Basic Sciences 1 nm = 10-9 m

Optics
Nanoscience

Nano-Photon
ics
Nanotechnology

Technical Sciences
Iridescent colors on butterfly wings
are examples of thin film
interference in nano-scale gratings
Water filters
With
only
NC LED
15
nm
filter

CNT computer
Nature 501 526 (2013)
 Applications of Nanomaterials in Additive
Manufacturing & Emerging Technologies
Additive Manufacturing (AM) create objects from
the bottom-up by adding material one cross-sectional
layer at a time.

For the past three decades, researchers and engineers

have focused on improving old and creating new
techniques, as well as developing novel materials.

Advantages of AM over traditional

manufacturing techniques:
•AM offers “design freedom” for engineers; because of
its additive approach, it is possible to build geometries
that cannot be fabricated by any other means.
•It is possible with AM to create functional parts without
the need for assembly.
•Also, AM offers reduced waste; minimal use of harmful
chemicals, such as etching and cleaning solutions; and
the possibility to use recyclable materials.
Limitations of AM
Despite these design and environmental advantages, of AM is limited due to
narrow selection of available materials.
CNT computer
Marriage between AM and Nanotech: Nature 501 526 (2013)
Emerging Technologies
The marriage of Nanotechnology with AM has the
potential to both complement existing techniques and to
create wholly new nanocomposites. Synthesis of
anisotropic
It is thus a promising approach to alleviating some of the nanostructures of
technologies’ limitations. silver, Biswas,
Kumbhakar, MRX
•There are a wide variety of nanomaterials, including (2014)
CNTs, NWs, Graphene, Metal NPs, and QDs.
•These materials possess unique characteristics that Nano-iron treated bar
allow applications in areas such as sensing, plasmonics,
catalysis, nanoelectronics, therapeutics, and biological Rapid Prototyping
imaging and diagnostics. J., 2006. 12 266
The deflection was reduced by
Thus, the addition of nanomaterials to AM printing media 95% and shrinkage was
could enable the creation of entirely new composites reduced by 60% by enlarging
the bonds between bigger
possessing unique properties and lead to expansion of particles and curing the cracks
application areas of AM. formed after the sintering
process
ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING AND NANOTECHNOLOGY: PROMISES AND CHALLENGES, Rapid
Prototyping Journal, Ivanova et al., 2013
 Introduction to Nanoscience

"There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom"

Richard Feynman
at an American Physical Society meeting at Caltech
on
December 29, 1959
 Feynman said
“I will not discuss how we are going to do it but only
that it is possible in principle in other words, what is
possible according to the laws of physics-----”.

In this speech, he would pose challenge after

challenge:
•Writing the Entire Twenty Four Vols. of the
Encyclopedia Britannica on a Pinhead!!!!
•Making an Electron Microscope that could
see Individual Atoms or
• Building a Microscopic Computer
What does fitting the Encyclopedia Britannica on a
pin head entail?????
pages
 Scaling Laws

While the physical characteristics of miniaturized systems

tend to vary a great deal from macroscopic systems,
engineers have found ways to effectively estimate how the
characteristics of something will change as its dimension
change.

These generalizations are known as the scaling laws.

 The Elephant and the Flea
While it is now possible to build things at the smallest
imaginable level, the atomic scale we will first explore
the implication of scaling on larger objects-sizes
between on elephant and a flea.
Let’s consider a simple rectangular solid with length
‘l’, height ‘h’, and thickness ‘t’.
The volume V and the surface area are:

The surface to volume ratio S/V then

scales as follows:

An elephant have a characteristic dimension D of about 1 m So, S/V

is on the order of 1 m-1; on the other hand, D of a flea or a bullet is
about 1 mm and so S/V is the order of 1000 m-1.
 EXAMPLE: To illustrate how small devices scale
can be relatively stronger than their macroscopic
counterpart.
What can scaling laws and the characteristic dimension tell us about
the differences between the elephant and the flea is their strength to
weight ratio.
Both Elephants and Fleas have muscle that allow them to apply
forces, so let’s look at the difference between these two animals and
the differences between their strength –to- weight ratio.
Since the strength of a muscle (the force it can produce) is roughly
proportional to the cross section area of that muscle, we can relate
strength to the characteristic dimension:

D2

D2/ D3
•Thus for an elephant, the strength-to-weight ratio is 1m-1,
versus about 1000 m-1 for a flea- looks like flea has a lot more
strength comparatively.

•The strength-to-weight ratio is a crude indicator of how high

they can jump.

• An elephant does not have sufficient strength to overcome

its weight and cannot jump at all. A flea, mean while, can
jump hundreds of times the length of its body.

•Of course, this is a simplified explanation that does not take into
account the shape, orientation, and structure of those animal’s
muscles and bodies.
The effect of scaling on the strength-to-weight ratio also is
apparent in human beings, which come in all shapes and
sizes
A Special Characteristics of
Nanomaterials
S/V Ratio
Surface to Volume Ratio
 Macroscale Surface Area to Volume Ratio
A typical material possesses:

~1023 atoms/cm3 (vol. density)

15 2
~10 atoms/cm
Assume that we have(areaadensity)
cube with the length
of its side = 1 cm
Total nos. of atoms = ~1023X(1)3 ~ 1023
Total nos. of surface atoms = ~1015X6X(1)2 ~
6X1015

Ratio of surface to total atoms ~6X10-8

 Nanoscale Surface Area to Volume Ratio
A typical material possesses:

~1023 atoms/cm3 (vol. density)

~1015 atoms/cm2 (area density)
Assume that we have a cube with the length of its
side = 1 nm
Total nos. of atoms = ~1023X(10-7)3 ~ 100
Total nos. of surface atoms = ~1015X6X(10-7)2 ~ 60
Ratio of surface to total atoms ~60/100 ~0.6
Density of states (DOS) and
Dimensions of Materials
 VARIOUS ABSORPTION AND EMISSION PROCESSES IN A
TWO-LEVEL SYSTEM
E2

Absorption

n
Emissio

n
Emissio
aa
aa aa aa

E1

To calculate various optical properties such as the rate of absorption or

emission and how electrons and holes distribute within the energy band
structure of the solid, we need to know the electron density of states
(DOS). In semiconductors, the density of states is a property that
quantifies how closely energy levels are packed.
 Calculation of DOS for 3D and 1D Solids
Case-I: 3D Solid
Let DOS- D (E); the total number of the avail. states per unit energy at E
We first plot the allowed values of the set ψ(x,y,z)=A exp[i(K x+K y+K z)]
x y z
(Kx, Ky, Kz) –each of which represents an
Kz
allowed wave-function K satisfying the periodic
boundary conditions as points in K-space. It is dx

seen that the various points thus plotted from a K

simple orthorhombic lattice in this space with Kx

(2π/L, 2π/L, 2π/L) as the dimension of the unit

cell and (2π/L) (2π/L) (2π/L) = 8π3/V (where Ky

V= L3 is the volume of the crystal) as the

volume of the K-space associated with a lattice
point.
We next calculate the quantity D (K) dK, which represents the
number of K-values or the points in the wave vector range dK
at K.
Volume of a spherical shell of radius K and thickness
dK
D (K) dK =---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Volume associated with a single lattice point

Hence,

By putting, E=h2K2/8mπ2

We get,

Multiplication is done by 2 as each energy level provides two electron

states (ms= ± 1/2)
It is usually express as D3D(E)
D(E) is a parabolic function of energy
The Schrödinger equation;
A Particle in a one-dimensional box

Hψ(x)=Eψ(x) H-Hamiltonian

Potential energy function V(x) for the particle

in an one-dimensional box.

By solving:

The probability density (ψ*ψ), and hence ψ, must be zero in regions I

and III, as the energy of the particle is finite.
Boundary conditions:
(i) ψI=ψII=0, x=0 &
(ii) ψII=ψIII, x=l
As ψ is zero in regions I and III, if we
require that ψ is continuous.
Thus by applying first boundary condition,

ψII(0)=Acos[0] + Bsin[0]=A = 0
With the second boundary condition,

We cannot have B =0, as this would mean,

i. e., the particle would be missing.
Therefore,
Energy levels for
an electron in a
1D box with a
length of 0.5 nm
Which gives, (5 Å).
Case-II: 1D Solid

Differentiating the above equation we have

Now, working that dn/dE gives the number of energy levels per unit
energy range and remembering that there are two electron states for
each energy level, one of spin up and one of spin down, we have for the
density of electron states (that are available) for a one dimensional line

D1D(E)

D1D(E)
-1/2
Case-III: 2D

For E ≥ 0. For a two-dimensional semiconductor such as a

quantum well, in which electrons are confined to a plane,
we can get the Density of States:

D2D(E)
 Case-III: 2D
For E ≥ 0. For a two-dimensional semiconductor such as a
quantum well, in which an electron is confined along one
dimension but able to travel freely in the other two
directions. In the image below, an electron would be
confined in the z-direction but would travel freely in the XY
plane. We can get the Density of States:

Z
 In the 3D density of states analysis, a spherical volume of width had to be used.
However, in 2D because we only need to operate in two dimensions, instead of using
the volume of a shell, the area of a ring with width of dk is used.
Analogous to the sphere in three dimensions, the circle is used because all
points on the circle are an equal distance from the origin; therefore, the circle
indicates equal values of energy.

The radius becomes

In the 2D case, the unit cell is simply a square with side length

The area of the unit cell is

Next, we need to find the area of the ring and then
divide by the area of the unit cell.
The area of a circle with radius r is

The are of the ring:

 Therefore, effective area :

DOS

Only positive values of k

should be considered.

The relationship between k and E is E=h2k2/8π2m. So

After substitution we
will get
DENSITY OF STATES FOR DIFFERENT DIMENSIONAL SOLIDS

Ref: B Van Zeghbroeck, Princ. of Sem. Devices, Colorado State Univ., 2004.