Preface

Summary

This book has grown out of our somewhat disorganized attempts to teach the physics and electronics of mesoscopic devices over the past decade. Fortunately, these have evolved into a more consistent approach, and the book tries to balance experiments and theory in the current understanding of mesoscopic physics. Whenever possible, we attempt to first introduce the important experimental results in this field followed by the relevant theoretical approaches. The focus of the book is on electronic transport in nanostructure systems, and therefore by necessity we have omitted many important aspects of nanostructures such as their optical properties, or details of nanostructure fabrication. Due to length considerations, many germane topics related to transport itself have not received full coverage, or have been referred to by reference. Also, due to the enormity of the literature related to this field, we have not included an exhaustive bibliography of nanostructure transport. Rather, we have tried to refer the interested reader to comprehensive review articles and book chapters when possible.

The Introduction of Chapter 1 gives a general overview of the important effects that are observable in small systems that retain a degree of phase coherence. These are also compared to the needs that one forsees in future small electron devices. Chapter 2 provides a general introduction to quantum confined systems, and the nature of quasi-two-, quasione- and quasi-zero-dimensional systems including their dielectric response and behavior in the presence of an external magnetic field. It concludes with an overview of semi-classical transport in quantum wells and quantum wires including the relevant scattering mechanisms in quantum confined systems.