Course

MS212 Thermodynamics of Materials

This course guides students to understand thermodynamic behaviors of materials systems. Standard concepts such as heat, work, internal energy, enthalpy, entropy, free energies, and chemical potentials will be introduced. Statistical mechanics will be briefly mentioned in order to provide a molecular interpretation of thermodynamic properties such as entropy. Thermodynamic properties of gases, liquid, and solids in pure form and in solution will be presented and the descriptions of the equations of state for ideal and real fluids and solids will be discussed and applied. Phase and chemical equilibrium for multicomponent systems will be also introduced.

MS414 Materials Characterization

Modern advances in materials science and engineering owe a lot to the growing capabilities of various characterization techniques. In this course, we will cover some of commonly used characterization techniques in materials science—what are the basic operational principles of them, what types of information can they provide, how are they practically instrumented, and how are they applied to real-world materials research. After the completion of the course, students should be able to tell which characterization techniques to use in order solve a given materials problem. The target audiences of the course are undergraduate juniors and seniors, as well as first-year graduate students.

MS516 Kinetic Processes in Materials

This course is intended for undergraduate seniors as well as first-year graduate students who are interested in learning advanced level kinetics in condensed phase. The course covers atomistic diffusion model including basic rate theory. Building on the atomistic description of diffusion, the course continues with treating macroscopic kinetic phenomena such as morphological evolution and interface motion of solids and phase transformations. Examples of applications of kinetic principles to real-world materials research will be also presented. After the completion of the course, students should be able to understand fundamental kinetic principles behind synthesis, processing, and stability of materials.