Conceptual Foundations of Materials

Download or read book Conceptual Foundations of Materials written by Steven G. Louie and published by Elsevier Science Limited. This book was released on 2006 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although some of the basics and models for solids were developed in the early part of the last century by figures such as Bloch, Pauli, Fermi, and Slater, the field of electronic structure theory went through a phenomenal growth during the past two decades, leading to new concepts, understandings, and predictive capabilities for determining the ground- and excited-state properties of real, complex materials from first principles. For example, theory can now be used to predict the existence and properties of materials not previously realized in nature or in the laboratory. Computer experiments can be performed to examine the behavior of individual atoms in a particular process, to analyze the importance of different mechanisms, or just to see what happen if one varies the interactions and parameters in the simulation.-