Center for Emerging Energy Sciences

                     

Instruction

Dr Duncan has taught a plethora of classes throughout his career ranging from introductory courses for undergraduates to complex topics for graduate-level courses.

Dr Duncan has taught throughout the physics curriculum, including the introductory sequence of university physics, introduction to special relativity and to quantum physics, graduate condensed matter physics, graduate electromagnetism, interdisciplinary courses in self-organized criticality and in biological physics, and senior laboratory. He led the development of a new core curriculum course called “Chemistry and Physics at the Nanometer-scale”, which he first taught during the Fall Semester, 2006 as part of our new Nanoscience and Microsystems graduate degree program. He has advised and co-advised many post-docs, graduate students, and undergraduate students at the University of New Mexico, Caltech, and Texas Tech University.  Many of his former students now hold permanent positions in academia, industry, and in the national laboratories within the United States

In the Fall of 2022 semester, Dr Duncan taught a new graduate-level course on Nanoscience and Quantum Sensing.  This special topics course (5300-019) was quite successful, and that it will be made a regular graduate course offering each Fall semester in the future, starting in the Fall, 2023 term.

PHYS 5300.19   FALL 2022  (Syllabus)

A graduate-level course on Nanoscience and Quantum Sensing.

We will introduce methods of advanced materials properties measurement, and nanomaterials design, within this course.  We will also discuss the principles of physics and chemistry at the nanometer scale, and the nature of macroscopic quantum coherence in materials, such as superconductors, superfluids, quantum dot arrays, and in Bose-Einstein Condensates (BEC). Students will be asked to prepare a term paper in one of the topical areas described below, based upon their class notes, publications, and lab results that they obtain in this class.  These topics include: 

1)     Properties of materials, and engineering principles, as a function of size 

2)     Multi-scale imaging, AI detection of emergent phenomena, and quantum dot arrays 

3)     Magnetic properties of materials, nanomagnets, and spintronics

4)     Fabrication and characterization of nanomaterials 

5)     Nuclear nanotechnology, fission / fusion fragment nanoparticles, and applications  

6)     Quantum coherence, superconductivity, superfluidity, BEC

7)     Quantum dot design principles for quantum sensors  

In the lab, students will learn to operate the Quantum Design ‘DynaCool' Physical Properties Measurement System (PPMS), and various electron microscopes, and the Zeiss 540 Crossbeam Focused Ion Beam (FIB) system to fabricate quantum dot arrays, and to study emergent structures at the nanometer level.  We will also conduct laboratory demonstrations and various other techniques that will be useful for the students to understand as they are introduced to this new field of research.  

Weekly calendar of activities and reading materials