This book is intended to provide a physical foundation for students interested in nanoscale science and technology. Developed while teaching a two-course graduate sequence on the topic, this book is my attempt to lay out the physical underpinnings of this incredibly broad topic while striking a balance between depth and approachability.

When I set out to develop and teach these courses, I found that most books on this subject were very specialized (for example, dealing only with nanoscale electronics), more focused on research rather then pedagogy (collections of review articles rather than an actual textbook), or not sufficiently technical (more like a series of Scientific American articles rather than a quantitative approach). I have tried to get to the physical basis of nanoscale science, the origins of the fascinating properties of materials at previously inaccessible size scales. A common thread through much of the material is the breakdown of the simplifying approximations that we have made in developing our physical models of macroscopic systems. I've also tried to indicate the underlying connections between some superficially disparate topics (e.g., band theory, coupled mechanical oscillators, and plasmons). Hopefully this approach allows students to develop an intuition for, and the ability to reason critically about, the nanoscale world. By focusing on the fundamentals rather than the latest research results (though those are mentioned when appropriate), I also hope that this text will stand the test of time, rather than appearing dated as soon as it is published. Of course, during the writing of this book, a number of other texts more or less in a similar or complementary spirit have appeared. These include Introduction to Nanoscale Science and Technology, edited by M. Di Ventra, S. Evoy, and J. R. Heflin, Jr. (Springer, 2004); and Introduction to Nanoscience by S. Lindsay (Oxford, 2009).

When teaching this material as a course or course sequence, I recommend supplementing the exercises with short-answer questions based on readings from the current literature.