This book is about the new materials now being created in order to fulfil specific scientific needs. This is one of the key fields within the new discipline of Molecular Engineering. The principles governing the structure of solids and their surfaces are described with examples drawn from ionic crystals, molecular crystals, valence crystals and alloys. Although many of the topics are related to Solid State Physics they are here introduced from a chemical rather than a physical point of view in order to open up the subject to a wider audience. The main text tries to remain simple by exploiting fully a modest number of theoretical ideas. An important aim of the text is to bridge the gap between the average chemistry degree course and the rapidly expanding research literature of the subject.
Der Autor erklärt die Struktur der festen Materie mit Bezug auf ihre beobachtbaren Eigenschaften. Die Rolle der Oberfläche wird ebenso dargestellt wie die möglichen katalytischen Eigenschaften von Clustern. Kooperative Effekte in Festkörpern und Legierungen werden mit einfachen Modellen beschrieben. Die physikalischen Grundlagen erklärt der Autor in der Sprache und mit den Modellen der Chemiker. Das Buch wendet sich an Chemiestudenten im 2. Studienabschnitt, die sich mit den Grundlagen des "Molecular Engineering" vertraut machen wollen.

1 Close-Packed Crystals

1-1 Introduction
1-2 Some simple lattices
1-3 The seven crystal systems
1-4 The packing of spheres
1-5 Forces between atoms
1-6 Scaling of the potential
1-7 Surface energies
1-8 Packing of ellipsoids
1-9 Sphere-like molecules and the plastic phase
1-10 Origin of the repulsive term
2 Ionic Crystals
2-1 Introduction
2-2 Alkali halide crystal structures
2-3 Electrostatic forces
2-4 Ionic radii
2-5 Scaling the energy
2-6 The Pauling rules for ionic crystals
2-7 Ferroelectrics
2-8 Superconductors
2-9 Surface energy
2-10 Defects
2-11 Colour centres
2-12 Ionic melts
2-13 Covalent and ionic character
3 Molecular Crystals
3-1 Introduction
3-2 Forces between molecules
3-3 Crystal structure
3-4 The paraffin crystals
3-5 Glass
3-6 Molecular vibrations in crystals
3-7 Excitons
3-8 Crystal engineering
4 Valence Crystals
4-1 Introduction
4-2 Equivalent orbital model of polymers
4-3 The model of trans-poly-acetylene
4-4 The diamond crystal 6
4-5 Elastic constants for diamond
4-6 A vacancy in diamond
4-7 Semi-conductors
4-8 Impurities and doping
4-9 The np junction
4-10 The pnp transistor
4-11 Excited states of trans-poly-acetylene
4-12 The SSH model of a soliton
5 Metals
5-1 Introduction
5-2 Small clusters and the Jahn-Teller theorem
5-3 Clusters of metal atoms
5-4 Larger clusters
5-5 Fractal clusters
5-6 Corrosion
5-7 Metal cohesion
5-8 Atom to metal transition
5-9 The Hume-Rothery rules for alloys
6 Surfaces
6-1 Introduction
6-2 The surface lattice
6-3 Energy of an atom approaching a surface
6-4 Clusters as surface models
6-5 Oxygen on graphite
6-6 Intercalation and graphite fluoride
6-7 The McCreery-Wolken model of adsorption
6-8 Oxidation of silicon
6-9 The absorption of hydrogen in palladium
6-10 Penrose tiling
7 Cooperative effects
7-1 Introduction
7-3 The square lattice
7-4 Alloys
7-5 Melting
7-6 Nematic liquid crystals
7-7 The smectic-A phase of liquid crystals
7-8 Ferromagnets
7-9 Ferroelectrics
7-10 Ferroelasticity
Appendix 1 Lattice sums
Appendix 2 The phase difference method
Appendix 3 Impurities in bands
Appendix 4 Second quantization
Appendix 5 Improved semi-empirical methods
Appendix 6 The LEPS interaction
Appendix 7 Green's functions
Appendix 8 Atomic units
Author Index.

Contents: Close-Packed Crystals

Ionic Crystals
Molecular Crystals
Valence Crystals
Metals
Surfaces
Cooperative Effects
Appendices
Author Index
Subject Index.