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Department of Materials Science and Engineering
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Oral Qualifying Exam on Solid-State Physics
This exam requires a working knowledge of solid state physics on the level of the following book:
L. Solymar and D. Walsh, Electrical Properties of Materials (Oxford Science Publications, 1998)
Other useful textbooks are:
H. M. Rosenberg, The Solid State (Oxford U. Press, 1978), is an excellent mid-level book with good explanations.
C. Kittel, Introduction to Solid State Physics (John Wylie & Sons), is the standard reference book in the field.
The exam is oral:
The student must have the ability to understand spoken questions from the examiners and to give responses, both in words and by writing equations or figures on the blackboard. The student is strongly advised to practice answering oral questions at the blackboard beginning as soon as possible.
The following is a non-exclusive list of the topics which may appear:
- Kinetic theory of the classical electron gas
- Electric transport in the Drude model, ac conductivity, Hall effect
- Quantum mechanics of matter waves
- Time-independent Schroedinger equation and solutions for one dimensional potentials
- Calculation of expectation values
- Hydrogen atom ground state
- Quantum numbers and the periodic table
- Thermodynamics of the quantum mechanical free electron gas
- Periodic potentials and Bloch waves
- Band diagrams in one-dimension; effective mass; holes
- Semiconductor band structures; carrier densities
- Extrinsic semiconductors; dopant ionization
- p-n junctions; electrostatics, carrier densities, and transport
- Metal-oxide-semiconductor diodes; electrostatics and carrier densities
- Dielectric constants and index of refraction
- Einstein coefficients for optical absorption and emission
- Semiconductor diode lasers