Notice: The NCN Summer Institute will be offering a 2 week workshop that will include this material. See "Electronics from the Bottom-up" for details.

How does the resistance of a conductor change as we shrink its length all the way down to a few atoms? This is a question that has intrigued scientists for a long time, but it is only during the last twenty years that it has become possible for experimentalists to provide clear answers, leading to enormous progress in our understanding. There is also great applied interest in this question at this time, since every computer we buy has about a billion transistors that rely on controlling the flow of electrons through a conductor a few hundred atoms in length.

In this series of four lectures (total length ~ 5-6 hours) Datta attempts to convey the physics of current flow in nanodevices in simple physical terms, stressing clearly what is understood and what is not. In Lecture 1, "Nanodevices and Maxwell's demon", Datta attempts to convey the subtle interplay of dynamics and thermodynamics that is the hallmark of transport physics using an electronic device reminiscent of the demon imagined by Maxwell in the nineteenth century to illustrate the limitations of the second law of thermodynamics. Lecture 2 ("Electrical Resistance: A simple model") explains many important concepts like the quantum of conductance using a simple model that Datta uses routinely to teach an undergraduate class on Nanoelectronics. Lecture 3 ("Probabilities, wavefunctions and Green's functions) describes the full quantum transport model touching on some of the most advanced concepts of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics including the Boltzmann equation and the non-equilibrium Green function (NEGF) formalism and yet keeping the discussion accessible to advanced undergraduates. Finally in Lecture 4 ("Coulomb blockade and Fock space") Datta explains the limitations of the current models and speculates on possible directions in which the field might evolve.

Overall the objective is to convey an appreciation for state-of-the-art quantum transport models far from equilibrium, assuming no significant background in quantum mechanics or statistical mechanics.

One-semester courses taught by the author on related material can be found at:

Undergraduate: Fundamentals of Nanoelectronics

Graduate: Quantum Transport - Atom to Transistor

Text: S. Datta, Quantum Transport: Atom to Transistor, Cambridge (2005), ISBN 0-521-63145-9.

Acknowledgements: Tehseen Raza.

No advanced background required.
Familiarity with linear algebra may be useful for some topics.

If you reference this work in a publication, please cite as follows:

• Datta, Supriyo (2006), "CQT: Concepts of Quantum Transport," http://www.nanohub.org/courses/cqt.

  BibTex | EndNote

1. ballistic transport
2. Coulomb blockade
3. diffusive transport
4. fock space
5. Maxwell's Demon
6. mesoscopic devices
7. nanoelectronics
8. NEGF
9. quantum transport
10. transport/quantum