Lessons from Nanoelectronics ─ A New Perspective on Transport: Basic Concepts

"Everyone is familiar with the amazing performance of a modern smartphone, powered by a billion-plus nanotransistors, each having an active region that is barely a few hundred atoms long. The same amazing technology has also led to a deeper understandingof the nature of current flow and heat dissipation on an atomic scale which is of broad relevance to the general problems of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics that pervade many different fields. This book is based on a set of two online courses originally offered in 2012 on nanoHUB-U and more recently in 2015 on edX. In preparing the second edition we decided to split it into parts A and B titled Basic Concepts and Quantum Transport respectively, along the lines of the two courses. A list of available video lectures corresponding to different sections of this volume is provided upfront. To make these lectures accessible to anyone in any branch of science or engineering, we assume very little background beyond linear algebra and differential equations. However, we will be discussing advanced concepts that should be of interest even to specialists, who are encouraged to look at my earlier books for additional technical details"--