Course syllabus

Course-PM: The synthesis, properties and structures of solid state materials

The overall aim of this 7.5 ECTS course is to give a good understanding of the synthesis, structure and properties of inorganic materials in the solid state, and to illustrate various technological applications of such materials. The course is composed of lectures, a project work, and laboratory exercises.

News: 

Slight change in the scheduling of lectures 15 and 17. The course-PM is updated on 2025-10-01.

Some study questions /quizzes added to the "/Previous exams" folder. Note, these are by no means comprehensive for the course.

Contact details

Examiner:

Maths Karlsson, Professor – Email: maths.karlsson@chalmers.se, Phone: 031 772 6770

Teachers:

Maths Karlsson, Professor – Email: maths.karlsson@chalmers.se

Christine Geers, Researcher – E-mail: geersc@chalmers.se

Lars Öhrström, Professor – E-mail: ohrstrom@chalmers.se

Daniel Weber, Assistant Professor – E-mail: daniel.weber@chalmers.se

Lab assistants:

Lars Öhrström, Professor – E-mail: ohrstrom@chalmers.se

Maureen Gumbo, Doctor - E-mail: gumbo@chalmers.se

Kanming Shi, PhD student – E-mail: kanming@chalmers.se

Pedram Pakmehr, PhD student - E-mail: pakmehr@chalmers.se 

Simon Duda, PhD student - E-mail: simond@chalmers.se 

Course representatives:

MPMCN Melker@didriksson.nu Melker Didriksson
MPMCN viktor.samuel.hellstrom@gmail.com Viktor Hellström
MPMCN matildahulthe@gmail.com Matilda Hulthe
MPMCN robel.mohammed99@gmail.com Robel Mohammed
MPMCN theostein32@gmail.com Theo Stein

Mid-term meeting:

September 26, 10.00-11.00. Room 6055 in Research Building 1, Chemistry building.

Course literature

Main literature:

Solid State Chemistry 5th ed. (Lesley Smart and Elaine Moore, CRC Press 2021)

Distributed lab compendium

Additional relevant literature:

Inorganic Chemistry 7th ed. (Mark T. Weller, OUP2018)

Characterization Methods in Inorganic Chemistry (Mark T. Weller, OUP 2017)

International Tables for Crystallography, vol. A. (Theo Hahn, Kluwer Academic Publishers)

Learning objectives and syllabus

  1. Describe a number of common inorganic type-structures, and have an understanding for why certain materials adopt certain type-structures.
  2. Apply the knowledge about crystal structures and bonding to predict a material’s electrical, magnetic, optical and mechanical properties.
  3. Explain the importance of close-packing in inorganic chemistry and its relevance to crystal structures and properties of solid materials.
  4. You should be able to describe how various types of defects affect the properties of a solid material. Also, understand ionic vs. electronic conductivity, conductivity mechanism, role of defects and structure, solid electrolyte, battery, fuel cell, sensor materials.
  5. Understand the basics in diffraction theory and symmetry relevant for analysing crystalline materials. This means that you should understand Bragg’s law, basic diffraction theory, and symmetry operations and the theory behind absent reflections. From a powder pattern of a cubic crystalline material you should be able to calculate the unit cell dimensions and determine the Bravais lattice type.
  6. Apply the proper preparative method for the preparation of inorganic materials by using information in the scientific literature. After the preparation you should be able to identify the reaction products, and determine and identify impurities. Based on this information you should be able to develop an improved preparative route in order to obtain pure reaction products.
  7. Describe and explain common experimental techniques used to characterize solid materials, such as TGA, DSC, IR and Raman spectroscopy, EXAFS, NMR, and SEM.
  8. Knowledge as well as practical experience of several databases as ICSD, CSD is also something you will obtain. Using graphical software (VESTA) to draw crystal structures from a standard data-file (CIF-format) containing structural data.

Examination form

Written examination at the end of the course. The maximum score on the exam will be 60 points.

Grade thresholds (including bonus points) on the written exam:

For Chalmers (KOO093): grade 3 (30 points), grade 4 (39 points), and grade 5 (48 points)

For GU (KEM150): grade G (30 points), grade VG (45 points)

Passed laboratory exercises, including the passing of experimental lab reports, and passed project (report + presentation) are also required for passing the course.

Note, the lab reports must be handed in at the deadlines at noted in the lab manual. 

Schedule

The course is scheduled to block D.

Please note, the schedule may be subjected to change. Any changes will be communicated through an Announcement. 

For an updated schedule, see TimeEdit

Laboratory exercises /demonstration /theoretical labs

There are five labs in the course; (1) Synthesis, (2) Powder X-ray diffraction, (3) Single-crystal X-ray diffraction, (4) Scanning electron microscopy, and (5) Thermal gravimetric analysis and differential scanning calorimetry. See the lab manual for details about the labs. See the Course-PM for the scheduling of the labs - both can be found in the /Files folder.