Computational Education And Materials Science Aspects

Chapters collected from “The Virtual Conference on Chemistry and its Applications (VCCA-2021) – Research and Innovations in Chemical Sciences: Paving the Way Forward”. This conference was held in August 2021 and organized by the Computational Chemistry Group of the University of Mauritius. These peer-reviewed chapters offer insights into research on fundamental and applied chemistry with interdisciplinary subject matter.

This textbook introduces modern techniques based on computer simulation to study materials science. It starts from first principles calculations enabling to calculate the physical and chemical properties by solving a many-body Schroedinger equation with Coulomb forces. For the exchange-correlation term, the local density approximation is usually applied. After the introduction of the first principles treatment, tight-binding and classical potential methods are briefly introduced to indicate how one can increase the number of atoms in the system. In the second half of the book, Monte Carlo simulation is discussed in detail. Problems and solutions are provided to facilitate understanding. Readers will gain sufficient knowledge to begin theoretical studies in modern materials research. This second edition includes a lot of recent theoretical techniques in materials research. With the computers power now available, it is possible to use these numerical techniques to study various physical and chemical properties of complex materials from first principles. The new edition also covers empirical methods, such as tight-binding and molecular dynamics.

Chapters collected from “The Virtual Conference on Chemistry and its Applications (VCCA-2021) – Research and Innovations in Chemical Sciences: Paving the Way Forward”. This conference was held in August 2021 and organized by the Computational Chemistry Group of the University of Mauritius. These peer-reviewed chapters offer insights into research on fundamental and applied chemistry with interdisciplinary subject matter.

Chapters collected from “The Virtual Conference on Chemistry and its Applications (VCCA-2021) – Research and Innovations in Chemical Sciences: Paving the Way Forward”. This conference was held in August 2021 and organized by the Computational Chemistry Group of the University of Mauritius. These peer-reviewed chapters offer insights into research on fundamental and applied chemistry with interdisciplinary subject matter.

Chapters collected from "The Virtual Conference on Chemistry and its Applications (VCCA-2021) – Research and Innovations in Chemical Sciences: Paving the Way Forward". This conference was held in August 2021 and organized by the Computational Chemistry Group of the University of Mauritius. These peer-reviewed chapters offer insights into research on fundamental and applied chemistry with interdisciplinary subject matter.

This book describes the state-of-the-art research topics in theoretical materials science. It encompasses the computational methods and techniques which can advance more realistic calculations for understanding the physical principles in new growth methods of optoelectronic materials and related surface problems. These principles also govern the photonic, electronic, and structural properties of materials which are essential for device applications. They will also provide the crucial ingredients for the growth of future novel materials.

Computational Materials Science: An Introduction covers the essentials of computational science and explains how computational tools and techniques work to help solve materials science problems. The book focuses on two levels of a materials system: the electronic structure level of nuclei and electrons and the atomistic/molecular level. It presents computational treatments of these system levels using molecular dynamics (MD) and first-principles methods, since they are most relevant in materials science and engineering. After a general overview of computational science, the text introduces MD methods based on classical mechanics and covers their implementation with run examples of XMD and LAMMPS. The author discusses first-principles methods based on quantum mechanics at an introductory level, using illustrations and analogies to assist students in understanding this difficult subject. The book then describes the density functional theory (DFT)—the first-principles method that can handle materials practically. It also reveals how each orbital of electron leads to particular properties of solids, such as total energy, band structure, and barrier energy. The final chapter implements the DFT into actual calculations with various run examples via the VASP program. Computational methods are contributing more than ever to the development of advanced materials and new applications. For students and newcomers to computational science, this text shows how computational science can be used as a tool for solving materials problems. Further reading sections provide students with more advanced references.