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Laetitia Soukiassian December 1999
Purdue University
NANOSCALE PHYSICS
Some References to Start With
Introduction
Nanoscale science and technology is a very
recent field of fundamental studies and applications development.
As an undergraduate student, I acquired some sparse knowledge
on this topic through general scientific journals, conversations
with my professors and an internship in a surface science laboratory.
I gradually decided to choose this topic for my research projects.
However I realized that I lacked a general overview of the subject
that would be necessary for me to select a given project. This
is how I came to undertake library research on nanoscale physics.
Objective
My objective was to find some kind of review
articles that would allow any science major to become familiar
with the concepts involved in studying nanostructures and have
a general idea of what kind of research is being done nowadays.
This turned out to be more difficult than I expected. Why? In
my opinion there are three main reasons:
- Nanoscale science is a very recent and totally new field.
- It involves many disciplines such as solid state and atomic
physics, organic chemistry, biology, engineering…
- It can lead to a large number and a great variety of discoveries
and applications, ranging from theoretical concepts to industrial
machines.
Search Process
I began by looking through the library catalog
by using 3 keywords: nanostructure(s), nanoscale and nanometer.
I also searched journals using INSPEC, a database for scientific
journals. I combined the above keywords with four journals:
Science, Nature, Physics World and Physics Today. I came up
with about 120 references. Many of them were too specific. I
discarded proceedings from conferences and thesis’s. Some
articles were obviously too difficult to understand or not closely
enough related to the subject (mostly too chemistry or engineering
oriented). In the remaining articles several topics seemed recurrent:
- nanopatterning
- carbon nanotubes
- conduction in nanostructures
- STM and AFM characterization and experiments
- nanomagnetism
Results
This is the list of references that I picked.
The first one (0) is a general description of nanostructures.
It’s the only review article I’ve been able to find
and a good one to start with. The following 5 references are
chosen to illustrate each of the recurrent topics on nanoscale
physics (1: STM and AFM experiments, 2: nanotubes, 3: conductance
in nanostuctures, 4: nanopatterning, 5: STM and AFM characterization).
- Richard W. Siegel: Exploring Mesoscopia, the bold new world
of Nanostructures. Physics Today, October 1993, pp. 64-68.
- D. M. Kolb et al: Nanofabrication of small Copper Clusters
on Gold (111) Electrodes by a Scanning Tunneling Microscope.
Science, 275, 1097-1999 (1997).
- Sumio Iijima: Helical Microtubules of graphitic carbon.
Nature, 354, 56-58 (1991).
- Ronald P. Andres et al: "Coulomb Staircase" at
Room Temperature in a Self-Assembled Molecular Nanostructure.
Science, 272, 1323-1325 (1996).
- Richard D. Piner et al: "Dip-Pen" Nanolithography.
Science, 283, 661-663 (1999).
- N. John Dinardo: Nanoscale Characterization of Surfaces
and Interfaces. Weinheim, New York: VCH (1994).
I did not include any reference for nanomagnetism because
I wasn’t able to find any that met my selection criteria,
but I wish to emphasize the fact that magnetism is definitely
an issue in nanoscale physics.
Conclusion
This gathering of references was done over
a small amount of time and could certainly be improved. In no
case should it be considered as a comprehensive list, especially
since the number of new articles and books on this subject is
increasing rapidly. If you have any suggestions or comments
please send an email to soukiass@purdue.edu
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Professor Reifenberger
for accepting to be my advisor for this project and for helping
me during my research.
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