Chemistry plays a significant role in the emerging interdisciplinary fields of nanoscience and nanotechnology. The nanoscale refers to materials with dimensions on the scale of nanometers (a thousandth of a thousandth of a thousandth of a meter). Control of the material world at the scale of atoms and molecules can produce materials with fundamentally different properties and behavior and has been touted as the next technological revolution. Some questions we will consider include: What nanotechnology already exists? What makes nanomaterials special? How can they be prepared? What tools can be used to study such materials? Three class periods and one laboratory period per week. (U) Offered in even years.

Prerequisite: Previous chemistry or physics background. No specific course is required but you should have experience doing and recording laboratory work.

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Fall 2023

Nanochemistry

Livingston

 First Half

 Second Half

Texts

Ludovico Cademartiri and Geoffrey Ozin, Concepts of Nanochemistry, Wiley-VCH (2009), ISBN 978-3-527-32597-9
Nano History, International Institute for Nanotechnology, Northwestern University

Literature Sources

Choose a recent (published since the course started) nano article that you understand from Nanoletters or ACS NANO or ACS Applied Nano Materials or Nanoscale Advances (or from another journal with prior approval.) Focus primarily on a figure or two in the paper and be familiar with the experimental section. Be sure to check for supplementary information (movies and the experimental section may be located there). By end of Wednesday email to claim a paper by including a link to the paper. Papers that have been selected will be posted in this syllabus. In class, present the figure(s) in a short oral report and answer questions about the experimental details. Test questions in this course will be drawn from these student selected papers, so for the rest of the class your presentation is a practice test.

Basis of evaluation

• Class participation in discussion of text readings. Come with questions about anything you do not understand.
• Selection of literature article, identification of main figure, familiarity with the experimental section and a short presentation on the article to the class (every 4 weeks). Your article grade will also be based on whether you understand the selected material and its connection with this course so select something you understand. If you choose wisely, your selection may be on the next test (see below).
• Laboratory experiments require you to plan ahead and record your work as you do it. In this course experiments also function as weekly problem sets since they involve measurement, calculation, and discussion. What you record in your bound laboratory notebook will constitute about half the points for this course so follow the required notebook format. Notebooks will be due most weeks. Adequately preparing and planning for lab and answering the questions will require several hours outside of class for each experiment.
• Two tests. Interpret the figures and text from literature reports by expanding on what is being illustrated, explaining procedures or techniques, and indicating why it might be important or why the authors included the figure or making connections to our class readings and laboratory work. Tell more than rewriting the caption. Try to use your interpretation to demonstrate additional knowledge beyond what is shown. You should write on each page for about ten minutes. Being able to list the experiments you have done and knowing the techniques and chemicals used in those experiments will be helpful in making connections. Looking at previous first tests and previous second tests provides examples but different papers will have been presented and different content may have been covered and different labs may have been done.

Accommodations