Course Description

This postgraduate course covers the most important basic elements of the phenomena and methods of the thermal and thermoelectric properties of materials, nanostructures and nanostructured materials. The course aims to elaborate or predict thermal and thermoelectric properties either from atomistic simulations at the nanoscale or from experimental methods and secondly, to introduce a unified framework for understanding the basic physics of heat transfer at the nanoscale and the conversion of thermal energy into electrical energy. Since the course is offered to both physicists and engineers, the importance of heat transfer and thermoelectric conversion in various applications as well as research trends will be reviewed, presenting some experimental, technological considerations and fundamental limits.

The first objective of this course is to provide graduate students with knowledge and understanding of the fundamentals of solid state physics related to heat transfer and thermoelectric conversion. The course will mainly focus on phonons (lattice vibrations) and electrons, their characteristics and statistical analysis (Photonic density of states, Phonon dispersion curves, etc.), their formalisms, their connection to basic thermal and thermoelectric properties and their scattering processes.

The second objective of the course will be to introduce graduate students to experimental methods for evaluating the temperature dependence and behavior of materials. The study of the measured thermal properties of nanostructures, the physical parameters affecting phase changes and methods used to analyze and explain the results are included. Moreover, significant properties to study the thermoelectric performance of the materials will be also discussed.

The third objective is to provide students with an understanding of the basic simulation approaches at the atomistic or continuous medium level and to develop modelling and simulation skills to calculate the thermal properties of nanostructures or nanostructured materials by applying the methods of Molecular Dynamics. A concrete study in LAMMPS will be given and a concrete example will be studied.

 

 

Course Info

Code:  ΠΥΕ204

Group:  Elective

Semester:  Second Semester

Hours / Week:   2

ECTS Units:  4

Instructors:  T. Kyratsi, Κ. Termentzidis