Orbital Approach to the Electronic Structure of Solids

This book provides an intuitive yet sound understanding of how structure and properties of solids may be related. The natural link is provided by the band theory approach to the electronic structure of solids. The chemically insightful concept of orbital interaction and the essential machinery of band theory are used throughout the book to build links between the crystal and electronic structure of periodic systems. In such a way, it is shown how important tools for understanding properties of solids like the density of states, the Fermi surface etc. can be qualitatively sketched and used to either understand the results of quantitative calculations or to rationalize experimental observations. Extensive use of the orbital interaction approach appears to be a very efficient way of building bridges between physically and chemically based notions to understand the structure and properties of solids.

Table of Contents:
1: Elementary introduction to the transport properties of solids 2: Electronic structure of molecules: use of the symmetry 3: Electronic Structure of One-dimensional Systems: Basic Notions 4: Electronic First-order Peierls distortions in periodic 1D systems 5: Application to trans-polyacetylene 6: Handling the symmetry in 1D compounds 7: Application to polyacene 8: Electronic structure of selected inorganic chains 9: Electronic structure of 2D and 3D systems 10: Density of States 11: Fermi surface and Low Dimensional Metals 12: Electron repulsion

About the Author :
Enric Canadell was educated at the Universities of Barcelona and Autónoma de Madrid, conducted research at the Universities of Barcelona, Chicago and Paris -Sud Orsay and since 1996 is Research Professor at the Institut de Ciència de Materials de Barcelona (CSIC). He is mostly interested in the development of ideas to relate the structure and properties of solids. In 1995 was awarded the Rochat-Julliard Prize of the Académie des Sciences de Paris for work on the electronic structure of low dimensional solids. Marie-Liesse Doublet was educated at Université de Paris-Sud Orsay and carried out research at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Institut des Matériaux de Nantes and Université de Montpellier 2 where she is now Directeur de Recherches (CNRS). Her research work deals with the electronic structure of solids with a special interest for energy storage materials. Christophe Iung studied at École Normale Supérieure de St Cloud and holds a Ph. D. from Université de Paris-Sud Orsay. He is now Full Professor and Vice-President of the Education Council of the University of Montpellier 2. His main research interest is in the field of quantum molecular dynamics.

Review :
[T]he authors of this book have provided an accessible introduction to the electronic structure of solids that makes the link between inorganic chemistry and physics. In particular, they show how one can use molecular orbitals (more often considered in chemistry courses than in physics courses) to build up solids and how one can then predict the transport properties ... A particular strength of this book is that a chapter introducing some new bit of theory is frequently followed by a chapter in which the results are applied to a real system. Contemporary Physics One major difficulty for chemists who play with their atomic toys in real space is the important fundamental concept of band structure theory, that of reciprocal space. The complexity of the band structures for most real materials is hidden in the spaghetti of bands running almost unpredictably between various k-points. Who has the patience to eat pasta one spaghetto at a time? (This book) helps you enjoy the meal. The authors build upon excellent teaching traditions that have been set by R. Hoffmann, J. Goodenough, J. K. Burdett, M.-H. Whangbo, and others, patiently showing how to understand and make use of the band structures of solids by looking at their real-space representations, the crystal orbitals, while relentlessly shuttling between the two ... Orbital Approach to the Electronic Structure of Solids is an example of qualitative thinking in the age of numerical quantum chemistry ... Overall, this is a great book. Angewandte Chemie International Ed. The electronic structure of solids is an important topic in many branches of science, including chemistry, physics, materials science and engineering. Chemists will be familiar with using orbital interaction arguments to describe electronic structure, while physicists will be more accustomed to using band theory, and this book aims to bridge the gap between the two schools of thought. Chemistry World