ECEN 5385 - Optical Properties of Materials
3 credit hours
On-line MaterialsCatalog Description: This course surveys the optical properties of materials which areimportant in optoelectronic and optical devices. It covers therelationships among optical constants, optical properties ofsemiconductors, dielectrics, ferroelectrics, liquid crystals, and metals.
Prerequisite: ECEN 5345, Introduction to Solid State
Textbook:
Goals: With the growing importance of optical materials in both solid state electronics and optical processing, this course fills an increasingly conspicuous void in our graduate offerings. For solid state students it falls in between the basic and the more advanced solid state courses, both of which emphasize transport rather than optical properties. For optics students it provides what may be their only in-depth study of materials relevant to optics.
Topics:
- Optical constants: absorption coefficient, dielectric constants and refractive indices, Kramers-Kronig relations, polarization.
- Insulators: phonons, dielectric polarizability, electrooptic effect, acoustooptic effect, ferroelectricity, optical activity.
- Liquid crystals: classes, molecular order, molecular dynamics, optical modulation.
- Metals: free electron theory, dielectric function, skin depth, dispersion relation, plasmons.
- Semiconductors: bandgaps -- direct, indirect and amorphous, quantum theory of absorption, excitons, optical modulation techniques, luminescence, quantum wells, nonlinear optical properties.
- None.
