Goal: To introduce the basic concepts to address the equilibrium and evolution properties of nano-scale systems.
Content: The course will start from a thermodynamic view of matter, justified by microscopic models. It will explore the rich physics and physical-chemistry that governs the formation of complex nanostructured materials, from solutions and binary systems to polymers and other self-organized soft matter systems.
- Equilibrium and non-equilibrium effects in materials and nanomaterials
- Thermodynamics and phase diagrams of homogeneous, heterogeneous systems, and interfaces
- Dynamics of phase transitions: nucleation and growth, spinodal decomposition
- Basics of polymer physics: the ideal chain, the entropic elasticity, excluded-volume effects in the mean-field approximation