Course syllabus

Atomically Thin 2D Materials: Advances and Challenges (2025)

 Goal

The goal of the Course is to give the students an overview of the 2D material research, in particular covering the expertise here at Chalmers. The course will have a broad spectrum, including the five focus areas of the Graphene Center (fundamentals, electronics, composites, energy, and bio-applications). The course will be given on the Chalmers campus (MC2 seminar room) or via Zoom for some lecturers.

 Structure

The course will take place in the third study period (22 January – 19 March 2025) and will consist of 16 lectures from teachers covering different areas of fundamentals and applications of 2D materials.  At the end of the course, students will present one seminal paper on 2D materials.

2D MATERIAL MOTIVATION

Introduction (Saroj Dash) [22 January 10-12, Room MC2-A820 Fasrummet]: learning outcomes, organization, introduction in 2D materials and related van der Waals heterostructures

2D MATERIAL CHARACTERIZATION

1. Optics and non-equilibrium dynamics (Joshua Thompson) [24 January 10-12,  online lecture]: Brief introduction to theoretical concepts, optical spectra (absorption, photoluminescence, pump-probe), electron-electron, electron-phonon, electron-photon interaction, excitons.

3. Transport properties theory (Mikael Fogelström) [31 January 10-12, Room MC2-A820 Fasrummet]: Green’s function formalism for conductivity, quantum Hall effect.

4. Transport properties experiment (Samuel Lara Avila) [05 February 10-12, Room MC2-A820 Fasrummet]: Quantum transport in epitaxial graphene mono- and bilayers.

5. Charge, Spin and Quantum transport (Saroj Dash) [07 February 10-12, Room MC2-A820 Fasrummet]: Electronic charge, spin and quantum transport in Graphene, Semiconductors and 2D van der Waals heterostructures.

6. Electron microscopy (Andrew Yankovich) [12 February 10-12, Room MC2-A820 Fasrummet]: Advanced electron microscopy for characterizing 2D material.

2D MATERIAL GROWTH

7. Growth of 2D materials (Avgust Yurgens) [14 February 10-12, Room MC2-A820 Fasrummet]: CVD methods for growing graphene and other 2D materials, qualitative strategies for obtaining large area single crystalline 2D materials

8. Chemistry of 2D materials (Xiaoyan Zhang) [19 February 10-12, Room MC2-A820 Fasrummet]: Chemical functionalization of 2D materials, potential applications of chemically functionalized/modified 2D materials.

2D MATERIAL APPLICATIONS

9. Electronics (Andrei Vorobiev) [21 February 10-12 hr, Room MC2-A820 Fasrummet]: High-frequency electronics, field effect transistors, fabrication techniques, novel device concepts based on 2D materials

10. Thermal management (Johan Liu) [26 February 10-12 hr, Room MC2-A820 Fasrummet]: basic theory for thermal transport, 2D materials development for thermal management, functionalization of graphene to increase heat spreading performances, thermal characterization, current and future applications

11. Biomedical applications (Ivan Mijakovic) [28 February 10-12 hr, Room MC2-A820 Fasrummet]: medical diagnostics, fighting bacterial infections and applications in bio-economy (sustainable bio-production), physical interactions of graphene with living cells.

13. 2D composites for multi-functional applications (Zhenyuan Xia) [05 March 10-12 hr, Room MC2-A820 Fasrummet]: How 2D sheets shall be used to create new “sandwich” composite materials and 3-dimensional foams for aerospace, automotive, energy storage and environmental application

14. 2D composites (Jinhua Sun) - [07 March 10-12 hr, Room MC2-A820 Fasrummet]:  Graphene-based composites with polymers and metals for different applications.

 15. SIO Graphene lecture (Johan Ek Weis) [12 March 10-12 hr, Room MC2-A820 Fasrummet]: The Swedish 2D material ecosystem. The current status from an industrial perspective.

16. 2D multifunctional materials (Roland Kádár) [14 March 10-12 hr, Room MC2-A820 Fasrummet] Multifunctional materials: the key role of 2D nanostructures and associated challenges

 2D MATERIAL BREACKTHROUGH PAPER PRESENTATION

17. Student presentations [19 March 10-12 hr, Room MC2-A820 Fasrummet]

Teachers provide suggestions for seminal papers, and each student must pick one with the condition that there is no large overlap with their own PhD thesis.

Literature for student presentations: A folder is created in Module; Teachers will add Literature for each lecture by 06 February 2025. Students select one paper each by 14 February and choose to be opponent in another paper by 21 February. I will create groups, on Canvas, so you can choose your papers.

Assignments: Assignments will be upload as an assignment on Canvas for each lecture with a deadline of 3 days. Answering to all assignments is compulsory.