Ebook: Gigantic Challenges, Nano-solutions: The Science and Engineering of Nanoscale Systems

For the past three decades, nanoscale science and engineering have provided many systems with unique and unprecedented properties illustrating that nanoscale science and engineering will definitely determine the trajectory of science and technology for decades to come. This book is the first textbook to introduce nanoscale systems in a pedagogical, and not research, style with many examples and problems. With ample examples and problems, it emphasizes the difference between bulk and nanoscale systems from a thermodynamic viewpoint and illustrates when a bulk system enters the nanoscale domain. The book also combines results of state-of-the-art research and provides the reader with the scientific foundations of such results.

The book introduces the basic fundamental thermodynamic treatment of nanoscale systems and the structure, properties, and performance of the three different types of fullerenes, namely, spherical, cylindrical, and planar or graphene. In addition, it discusses 2D material systems based on such building blocks. Finally, it shows the thermodynamic criteria allowing nanoscale performance in physically huge systems.