Quantum Transport: Atom to Transistor

The author (SD) claims that this is a physics book written for engineers. Maybe that explains why, unlike the authors of most physics books written for physicists, he doesn't seem particularly concerned with elegance, concision, abstract generality or showing how clever he is in this book. Apparently, his main concern is to help you understand stuff. Not only that, but he's chosen some very interesting stuff to tell you about. The narrative arc of the book is to show you how to get from a particle in a box to Ohm's Law, as instantiated in nanoscale transistors. The path to doing this is already laid out in the first chapter, using a "toy" level of analysis. The next nine chapters lay out building blocks for attacking the problem using Green's function (GF) techniques, which are a bit more modern and versatile than the transmission formalism favored in the past (including by SD in a previous book). The whole picture is put together in Chapters 11 and 12, followed by an appendix that shows (albeit quite tersely in comparison to the rest of the book) how the same problem is dealt with using a second-quantization (2Q) GF formalism. The fact many pieces of this arc are repeated at successively deeper levels of analysis is very helpful. So too are SD's "big picture" introductions at the beginning of each chapter, and at the beginnings of the longer subchapters. Throughout, SD pauses to describe in words and pictures the physics behind pretty much each term of each equation -- a de-mystification that most authors of physics texts seem to avoid as if it were blasphemy. I was especially impressed when SD used these opportunities to allude to some deeper and more general issues, such as how you get from time-reversible equations to irreversible physics. In fact the whole book serves as an applied introduction to non-equilibrium stat mech, a cutting-edge subject usually reserved for abstract theoretical treatment, or the last few pages of a conventional textbook. SD also foregrounds some basic points that are often buried in or missing from other texts, such as that the Schroedinger equations do not explain why atoms emit light, and why "optical" phonons are called that. (This latter point had really bugged me when I took a course in solid state years ago, so while reading this book I re-checked 7 or 8 solid state texts within reach, including Ziman, and found that only Kittel and Ashcroft & Mermin bothered to explain this point, and so casually (K) or vaguely (A & M) that you'd hardly notice.) I was especially struck by the book's attention to modeling transistor contacts and how they interact with the channel. In the last few years this has become a big issue in organic electronics, as researchers have found that many aspects of device behavior were far more dependent on the contacts than they'd previously appreciated (kind of a let-down after going to the trouble of synthesizing some exotic channel material). That said, though, note that the book'

The book is in great condition and was ok for the price. Ad i couldnt find it in any of my university book stores

For over thirty years, Green's functions have been used to calculate effects in solid state physics. But usually for pure research, destined to be written up in scientific journals. Here, Datta offers some outreach. There is indeed quite a lot of theory presented. But there is a corresponding emphasis on the latest materials fabrication abilities, including the making of nanotubes and quantum dots. All these have (presumably) interesting and practical applications. So if you want to design novel devices from a theoretical standpoint, the maths tools developed in the text can be very useful.