MSN 511 Surface Science and Spectroscopy

Surfaces behave nothing like bulk material, the top few atomic layers govern catalysis, adhesion, corrosion, and device interfaces, and probing them requires techniques fundamentally different from what you'd use on a 3D crystal. The course walks through the major families of surface probes (optical, X-ray, charged-particle, scanning probe), focusing on what each technique actually measures, where it fails, and how to read its output, with a term project where you pick techniques to characterize a real material system. As a graduate MSN elective it leans on solid-state and basic spectroscopy background, and pays off directly in thin-film, nanomaterials, and interface-focused research.