The nanoHUB tool "Quantum Dot Lab" allows users to compute the quantum mechanical "particle in a box" problem for a variety of different confinement shapes, such as boxes, ellipsoids, disks, and pyramids. Users can explore the energy spectrum and orbital shapes of new quantized states interactively. These artificial atoms have their own particular optical absorption properties that can be explored interactively in seconds. This presentation introduces the particle in the box problem in 1D and 3D, explores the concept of occupied and empty states, allowed transitions, and optical absorption. Students are encouraged to duplicate all the simulation results shown in the presentation. Exercises and a project or homework assignment is given at the end of the presentation.

Dr. Gerhard Klimeck is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University and serves as the Associate Director for Technologies of the National Science Foundation Network for Computational Nanotechnology since Dec. 2003. For the NCN he has been directing the replacement of web-form driven online simulation on www.nanoHUB.org by fully interactive simulations. The change in technology resulted in a six-fold growth of simulation user numbers in just over 2 years to over 5,900 annual users. His research interest is in the quantum mechanical modeling of electron transport through nanoelectronic devices, parallel computing, and genetic algorithms. This interest drove the development of NEMO 1-D and NEMO3-D. Dr. Klimeck received his Ph.D. in 1994 from Purdue University and his German electrical engineering degree in 1990 from Ruhr-University Bochum.

Course lecture for ECET 499N Introduction to Nanotechnology.

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• Sunhee Lee; Hoon Ryu; Gerhard Klimeck (2008), "Introduction to Quantum Dot Lab," https://nanohub.org/resources/4194.

1. nanoelectronics
2. particle in a box
3. quantum dots
4. quantum mechanics
5. tutorial
6. wavefunction