Physics 880.20

Prof. Arthur Epstein

Spring 2002, Monday and Wednesday, 11:30 am - 1:18 pm

Electronic Polymers and Polymer-Based Magnets

Course Outline:

* Introduction to the field.

* History of the field.

* Introduction to quasi-one-dimensional physics 

     -Peierls distortion

     - Charge density waves

     - Spin density waves

     - Role of Coulomb repulsion

     - Electron-phonon coupling

     - Commensurability

     - Solitons, polarons, bipolarons, excitons, etc.

* Introduction to quasi-one-dimensional materials

     - Charge transfer salts

     - Metal chain compounds

     - Polymers

* Metallic polymers

     - Materials

     - Experimental results (conductivity as a function of temperature and frequency)

     - Mechanisms for charge transport (3 dimensional variable range hopping (VRH), one-dimensional VRH), quasi-one-dimensionsal VRH), fractal charge motion, resonant quantum tunneling)

* Semiconducting polymers

     - Materials

     - Electronic structure, excitations, photophysics (fs to s)

     - Light emitting devices (fabrication, operation, future directions)

     - Transistors (fabrication, operation, furture directions)

* Organic- and Polymer-based magnets

     - Materials

     - Survey of experimental results

     - New concepts (fractal spin glass, dipole stabilized magnetism, photoinduced magnetism, organic-based spintronics)

* Related problems

     - Carbon nanotubes

     - Biopolymers

     - Special topics