Solid State Theory

• Lecturers: Hannes Margraf, Arobendo Mondal and Harald Oberhofer
• Tutors: Simon Annies, Simiam Ghan and Elisabetta Landini

The lecture covers the fundamental theoretical concepts of the solid state in three parts: The first part introduces to the periodic structure of solids and connected basic concepts like lattice structure, reciprocal space and phonons. The second part focuses on the electronic structure of solids, on band theory and the concept of Bloch waves. The connection “chemical bond – band” is illustrated using Hückel-theory. Various approaches to compute the electronic structure of solids are presented, including density-functional theory and tight-binding (Hückel) theory. The last part briefly discusses surface phenomena, as they are for instance of relevance in heterogeneous catalysis. For this, concepts like physisorption, chemisorption, surface reconstruction and work function are introduced.