PH 500: Thin Film Physics and Technology
Prof. S S Major

Prerequisite

Formally, no prerquisites beyond class 12 syllabus. Specifically, topics like chemical thermodynamics and phase transitions will be required, although the instructor will revise the relevant topics in sufficient detail in the course.

Course Content

The course first develops (revises) some preliminaries from thermodynamics. Then, the main physical process involved generally in thin film deposition including evaporation, transport, adsorption, and bond formation (growth) are discussed till midsem. Then, we go on to cover the physical processes involved in some of the more popular thin film growth techniques today, such as molecular beam epitaxy, pulsed laser deposition, sputtering and chemical vapour deposition.

Books

D.L. Smith's book on thin films is a good reference. But, overall, the instructor referred to different books for different sections, and would recommend various books as the course progressed. His own slides are also quite detailed.

Lectures

Lectures were completely online due to online semester. Attendance was compulsory. It was hard to keep up with the course if you missed a lecture.

Assignments, Exams and Grading

There were about 5 assignments which were assigned from the tutorial sheets themselves. Sir discussed the method of solution in class in brief but you had to do your own calculations. These carried about 5% weightage. There was one quiz worth 10% and a course project worth 15%. The cpurse project was based on a general literature review from the field, analysing multiple research papers. There was a midsem and endsem exam. All exams including quiz were open notes, open slides, open book and open internet. (But still, the class average was too low compared to the prof's expectations and the grading stats reflect this : so don't take this course lightly)

Tips

This course is more of an engineering course than a physics course and overall has a very different flavour compared to most other courses in the department. There is a lot of stress given to performing calculations and getting numerical answers (as an engineering course.) At the same time, there is also a lot of qualitative material which is important to understand (no rote learning required because of open book exam, though). But, I think that there is a lot of learning value to taking this course if you plan to enter nanofabrication/experimental device physics. This course is compulsory to take if you are doing a dual degree.