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Iptycenes Chemistry From Synthesis to Applications 1st Edition Chuan-Feng Chen
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Preface ix
Editors xv
Authors xvii
Contributors xxi
1. Introduction: Motivation for Nanotechnology 1 Sunipa Roy, Chandan Kumar Ghosh, and Chandan Kumar Sarkar
3. Crystallography, Band Structure, and Density of States at Nanoscale ..... 33 Swapnadip De
4. Growth Techniques and Characterization Tools of Nanomaterials .... 51 Chandan Kumar Ghosh and Arka Dutta
5. Electrical Transport in Nanostructures .....................................................
Angsuman Sarkar
6. Synthesis of Noble Metal Nanoparticles: Chemical and Physical Routes ................................................................................... 107 Chandan Kumar Ghosh
7. Biological Synthesis of Metallic Nanoparticles: A Green Alternative .................................................................................................... 131 Kaushik Roy and Chandan Kumar Ghosh
8. Environmental and Biological Applications of Nanoparticles .......... 147 Kaushik Roy and Chandan Kumar Ghosh
9. Nanogenerator: A Self-Powered Nanodevice........................................
Sunipa Roy and Amrita Banerjee
10. Solar Photovoltaic: From Materials to System ......................................
Sunipa Roy and Swapan Das 11. Volatile Organic Compound–Sensing with Different Nanostructures ............................................................................................
Sunipa Roy and Swapan Das
Preface
Nano is a Greek word meaning “dwarf.” One nanometer is 10−9 meter. In modern-day technology, the term “nano” has assumed great significance because physical and chemical properties of materials change significantly when their sizes are reduced to dimensions of 100 nm or less. Thus nanoscience and nanotechnology refer to the science and technology of materials and systems having dimensions in the range of 1–100 nm. In the field of electronics, there are immense possibilities of nanostructured semiconductor devices, some of which are demonstrated by different authors in this book.
This technological advancement also demanded understanding of the new device physics as the properties of materials changed significantly at such reduced dimensions. These dimensions are comparable to the electron wavelength of motion, and hence the device characteristics are governed by the confinement of the electron wave function, commonly referred to as quantum confinement effect. Quantum confinement effect due to changes in the size and shape of nanoparticles (NPs) can modify the energy bands of semiconductors and insulators. A brief description on electrical transport of nanostructure is given in this book.
Nano particles have attracted much interest in recent years by virtue of their unusual mechanical, electrical, optical, and magnetic properties. Due to their special properties, NPs are finding wide applications in all fields of engineering. Several synthetic approaches have been developed to control their morphology and synthesis.
Metal NPs are of particular interest in medical diagnostics because of their antibacterial activity and low toxicity to human cells. This antibacterial effect is further enhanced with the reduction in particle size. Biomedical devices must be biocompatible, which indicates nontoxicity of the reactants used in nanoparticle synthesis. The so-called “green synthesis” method suits well for this purpose. A novel green synthesis of NPs makes use of environmentalfriendly, nontoxic, and safe reagents, which is discussed in Chapter 7.
Nanocomposites for energy harvesting are a latest area of research and contain many unexpected benefits in the field of technology. Keeping this in mind, a chapter has been written to present the matter from an experimental point of view.
Nanotechnology is a completely new science that came on the market a few years ago, though many are not fully conscious of its presence in daily life. The application of nanotechnology can be found in many everyday items. Thousands of commercial products incorporate nanomaterials. Though it is a relatively new science, its applications range from consumer goods to medicine to improving the environment.
In the present work, we have covered different areas of nanotechnology from energy harvesting to gas sensing. A systematic step-by-step approach has been adopted to facilitate the thinking of new researchers in the nanotechnology domain.
This edited volume bridges the gap between and presents the latest trends and updates in three topics of ever-increasing importance (nanogenerator, thin-film solar cell, and green synthesis of metallic NPs) in current and future society. The optical responses of an ensemble of NPs drastically differ from individual NPs due to collective resonance of free electrons on the surface. It provides the state-of-the-art as well as current challenges and advances in the sustainable preparation of novel metal NPs and their applications. Further, the global energy consumption is estimated to rise by more than 56% within the next 20 years. At present, most of the energy produced is from the combustion of fuels, such as natural gas and coal. To restrain global dependence on exhaustible natural resources and their hazardous effects, more technical and scientific research has been directed toward the renewable energies to reduce the cost of energy production. Though there are many solid-state devices to generate renewable energies, among them, piezoelectric nanogenerators, which convert mechanical energy, vibrational energy, and hydraulic energy into electrical energy, can be used as selfpowered nanodevices that operate at very low power (nW to μW). Moreover, nanotechnology-enhanced, thin-film solar cells (which convert the energy of the sun into electricity) are a potentially important upcoming technology. With the dynamic development we currently see in the area of thin-film/ heterojunction-based solar cell research, this book enhances awareness in the area of renewable energy applications. Finally, this edited volume covers from the very basics to the more advanced, trendy developments, containing a unique blend of nano, green, and renewable energy.
The book consists of 15 chapters.
Chapter 1 provides an introduction to the concept of nanotechnology and its application.
Chapter 2 introduces the basic concept of quantum mechanics. This chapter starts with quantum theory of radiation, developed from Maxwell’s theory for black body radiation. It is stressed that Maxwell’s theory, developed on the basis of the wave nature of radiation, does not predict the spectral dependency of radiation. Quantum theory for radiation was introduced by Planck on the basis of the particle property of radiation, defined as a photon. Newton’s law that predicts the position and momentum of any macroscopic object at any instant of time does not hold good for the quantum particle. Then Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle illustrates the fact that position and momentum of any microscopic particle cannot be measured simultaneously. At this point, quantum theory was developed by Schrödinger on the basis of the wave nature of quantum particles. It is attributed that wave function (solution to Schrödinger’s equation) contains all information regarding the quantum particle, and a few mathematical tools, defined as operators, have
been introduced to extract measurable parameters. A few approximation methods are also discussed to find out wave function where direct solution of Schrödinger’s equation is not possible.
Chapter 3 provides a brief introduction of crystal structure followed by wave function of electrons. The chemical potential of electrons originates from the following two, electron–lattice and electron–electron interaction. This chapter deals with Sommerfeld free electron theory neglecting these two interactions. But this does not differentiate metal, semiconductor, and insulator. Then, Bloch theory is discussed considering electron–lattice interaction. The concept of density of states describing number of electronic states per unit energy interval is introduced in this chapter. The operational principles of a few nanoscale devices have also been introduced in this chapter on the basis of wave function of any quantum particle and tunneling phenomena.
Chapter 4 discusses different synthesis techniques of nanomaterials, including top-down and bottom-up approaches. In this chapter, various characterization techniques have been discussed to identify the morphology and properties of nanomaterials. Native defects that persist in the film can be identified. Structural characterizations like XRD, FESEM, and EDX confirming the crystal structure and determining the crystallite size are discussed lucidly. The impurity present in nanomaterials has been discussed through FTIR spectroscopy. Moreover, the development of crystal growth techniques, such as MOCVD and MBE, is discussed in this chapter. Parallely, sophisticated patterning and fabrication tools, such as e-beam lithography and ion beam etching techniques, have enabled the reduction of conventional silicon VLSI components to the nanoscale.
Chapter 5 deals with electrical transport in nanostructured materials. It is briefly discussed that in a nanostructured material, the fundamental transport mechanism differs from that of the bulk. Hence, ballistic transport is designated for the nanostructured materials.
Chapter 6 provides information about the chemical, sonochemical, and radiolysis methods for the synthesis of noble metals such as silver, gold, and platinum NPs. A few physical methods have also been discussed briefly. It has been investigated that surface-to-volume ratio plays a fundamental role in determining the properties of NPs, which is dependent on morphology of the particles, that is, it can be stated that the shape of a NP also plays a crucial role in determining its different physical and chemical properties. Therefore, we have also introduced a few methods (template-assisted method, hydrothermal method, etc.) to prepare noble metal NPs with different shapes.
Chapter 7 demonstrates green synthesis methods of noble metal NPs. It is well known that the physical and chemical routes for the synthesis of noble metal NPs include various chemicals as starting materials, and the equipment used are very costly sometimes. The chemicals used in the process are carcinogenic as well. At this stage, green synthesis protocols could be a suitable alternative for the synthesis of noble metal NPs. In this chapter, we have
elaborated a few green synthesis methods for the preparation of noble metal NPs. Their main advantage lies in the fact that they are environment friendly and very cost effective. In this context, various green methods, including different microorganisms (bacteria, fungi, algae) and plant (leaf, root, flower etc.) extract, have been briefly discussed.
Chapter 8 discusses various useful application opportunities of NPs, particularly noble metal NPs. It is already established that various types of dyes, from textile industries, are very harmful to the environment. This chapter deals with photocatalytic processes by which dyes can be degraded using noble metal NPs. This chapter also provides a brief mention about the detection of mercury and hydrogen peroxide by these noble metal NPs. These NPs also have potential in a few biological applications, and this chapter suggests some ideas on this matter. For example, antibacterial, antifungal, anticancer, and antiviral activities of noble metal NPs have been briefly discussed in this chapter along with their mechanism. The present chapter also illustrates its basic principle and opportunity of bioimaging of noble metal.
Chapter 9 provides a coherent coverage of the ever craved nanogenerators from fundamental materials, basic theory and principles of physics, scientific approach, and technological applications to have a full picture about the development of this technology.
Chapter 10 discusses the overall view of solar cell technology. Highefficiency solar cells and the physical principles of design, fabrication, characterization, and applications of novel photovoltaic devices are presented in this chapter. Solar panel manufacturing techniques are briefed, and solar photovoltaic power plant design is presented in Chapter 10.
Chapter 11 offers an approach to nanotechnology-based VOC (volatile organic compound), as VOCs are thought to be carcinogenic in high concentrations and after long-term exposure. Different types of nanostructures used in the detection of VOCs are summarized. The main attraction of this chapter is the introduction of different packaging technologies specifically used for gas sensing.
Chapter 12 illustrates graphene and its properties in nanoscale science. It behaves well enough in the field of nanoelectronics. A detailed study about its honeycomb lattice structure and its importance in the formation of Brillouin zone are presented in this chapter. The zero-bandgap semiconductor property of graphene has been elaborately discussed. The author concludes this chapter by discussing some application areas of graphene.
Chapter 13 attempts to help realize why a high-performance sub-100 nm gate transistor demands semiconductor nanotechnology of highest quality and how that technology might be used to realize right-first-time, manufacturing systems.
Chapter 14 presents high-mobility III–V semiconductors having significant transport advantages, which are extensively used as alternative channel materials for upcoming high-scaled devices. The III–V compound semiconductor binaries such as GaAs, GaN, InP; ternaries such as InGaAs, AlGaAs,
AlGaN, and AIInN; and quaternary InAlGaN, InAlGaAs, and GaInPAs are widely studied for enhancing device performance. GaAs-based compounds have much higher mobility than their silicon counterparts and are thus suitable for high-speed operations. This chapter focuses on GaN-based heterostructures (such as the traditional AlGaN/GaN) with high breakdown voltage and large carrier density with high mobility, which make them ideal for high frequency and high power applications.
Chapter 15 provides an overview of the advanced fabrication technique NEMS (nanoelectromechanical system), which is very hot topic today. Information on the scaling effect and current research on NEMS and carbon materials are discussed.
Editors
Sunipa Roy received her MTech in VLSI and microelectronics from West Bengal University of Technology in 2009 and her PhD in engineering from Jadavpur University, ETCE Dept, in 2014. She served as a senior research fellow of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Government of India and junior research fellow of the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India. She is a chartered engineer of the Institution of Engineers (India) and a member of IEEE. Presently she is head in the Electronics and Telecommunication Engg. Department at Guru Nanak Institute of Technology, Kolkata. She served as an invited speaker at other Indian universities. Her research interests include nanopiezotronics, MEMS, nanocrystalline metal oxide, graphene and its application as a gas sensor. She has authored one book (CRC Press) and published more than 20 research papers in various peerreviewed international journals and also national/international conferences. She has filed patents and is supervising PhD students under her guidance.
Dr. Chandan Kumar Ghosh is an assistant professor in the School of Materials Science and Nanotechnology, Jadavpur University. He received his PhD from the Department of Physics, Jadavpur University, in the year 2010. His main scientific interests include synthesis and study of optical properties of nanomaterials, green synthesis of noble metal nanoparticles, antibacterial activity of nanomaterials, and electronic structure calculation by density functional theory. He has published more than 45 papers in different peerreviewed international journals.
Chandan Kumar Sarkar (SM’87) received his MSc in physics from Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India, in 1975; his PhD from Calcutta University, Kolkata, India, in 1979; and his DPhil from the University of Oxford, Oxford, UK, in 1983. He was also postdoctoral research fellow of the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 at the Clarendon Laboratory, University of Oxford, from 1983 to 1985. He was a fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford. He was a tutor and lab instructor at Clarendon Laboratory. He was also a visiting fellow with the Linkoping University, Linkoping, Sweden; Max Planck Institute at Stuttgart, Germany. He joined Jadavpur University, Kolkata, in 1987 as a reader in electronics and telecommunication engineering. Subsequently, he became a professor and the head of the Department of Physics, and dean of Faculty of Science Bengal Engineering Science University (BESU) during 1996–1999. Later he once again joined Jadavpur University ETCE Department as a professor. He has served as a visiting professor in many universities such as the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan and Hong Kong University, Hong Kong. Since 1999, he has been a professor with the Department of Electronics
and Telecommunication and has published more than 300 papers in journals of repute and in well-known international conferences. He has guided more than 20 PhD candidates. Dr. Sarkar is the chair of the IEEE Electron Devices Society (EDS), Kolkata Chapter, and former vice chair of IEEE Section. He serves as a distinguished lecturer of the IEEE, EDS and was invited to several countries. He is a fellow of IE (India) Chartered Engineer, IETE, and WBAST. Currently he is an associate of the Third World Academy of Science at National University, La Plata, Argentina. Previously he was associated with the Shanghai Institute of Metallurgy, Shanghai. He has been awarded INSA-Royal Society (UK) fellowship to visit several UK universities.
Authors
Sarosij Adak received his BSc in physics from Calcutta University, his MSc from Vidyasagar University, and his MTech in electronics and communication engineering from the Institute of Engineering and Management, Kolkata, India, in the years 2007, 2009, and 2011, respectively. Currently, he is a senior research fellow (DST) at Jadavpur University and is working toward a PhD in engineering at the Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur, Howrah, India. His field of work is in wide–band gap, compound semiconductor–based AlGaN/GaN MOSHEMT; InAlN/GaN HEMT; and MOSHEMT. He has published his research paper in many scientific journals.
Amrita Banerjee is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering at Heritage Institute of Technology (Kolkata). She received her BSc (physics honors) from the University of Calcutta in 2008. She also received her BTech from the Institute of Radio Physics and Electronics (University of Calcutta) and her MTech from the same institute with a specialization in space science and communication. She received a scholarship under the “Space Science Promotional Scheme” given by ISRO while pursuing her master’s degree. Presently, she is pursuing her PhD. Her research interest includes nanogenerators and nanodevices.
Swapan Das received his MTech in VLSI design and microelectronics technology from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India, in 2015. He is currently pursuing a PhD in the Department of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering at Jadavpur University, Kolkata. His current research interests include MEMS-based gas sensor interface with CMOS circuit.
Swapnadip De graduated with a degree in radio physics and electronics from the University College of Science and Technology in 2001. He obtained his MTech in VLSI and microelectronics from Jadavpur University. Later, he was awarded a PhD in engineering from Jadavpur University. He has been working as assistant professor in the Department of ECE at the Meghnad Saha Institute of Technology since December 2002. He is a senior member of IEEE and is currently the vice chairman of IEEE EDS Kolkata Chapter. He is also the branch chapter advisor of IEEE MSIT EDS SBC. He has been an executive member of IEEE EDS Kolkata Chapter since December 2013. He is a senior member of the International Engineering and Technology Institute, Hong Kong, and also a life member of IETE. He has also been an executive committee member of IEEE SSCS Kolkata Chapter since September 2015. He has published papers
in refereed international journals of reputed publishers like Elsevier, Springer, IEEE Transactions, IET, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, World Scientific and WSEAS, to name a few. He has already authored nine books in India and abroad. He is the official reviewer of many reputed international journals and conferences like IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices. He is the editor of journals of international publishing houses like Inderscience Publications, UK, and WASET, USA. He has organized many international conferences, workshops, and mini-colloquiums. He has also authored reports in IEEE EDS Newsletters and IEEE Newsletters of the Kolkata Section. His biography is included in the 33rd edition of Marquis Who’s Who in the World 2016. His biography was also nominated for the 2010 edition of Marquis Who’s Who in the World
Arka Dutta received his BTech in electronics and communication from West Bengal University of Technology, Kolkata, India, in 2010 and completed his ME with a specialization on electron devices in 2012 in the Department of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, West Bengal, India. He started working toward his PhD in the same department in 2013 and completed his PhD from Jadavpur University as Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) senior research fellow in 2016. His research interests include compact modeling of advanced CMOS devices, device modeling for process variation, analog/RF performance analysis of advanced CMOS devices, and reliability analysis of RF CMOS devices for circuit applications.
Dutta was a senior research fellow, CSIR, Government of India, and also served as senior laboratory engineer under the SMDP II, Government of India project at Jadavpur University from 2012 to 2013. He has also served as joint secretary in IEEE EDS, Kolkata Section, from 2014 to 2015. He is presently working as a design engineer at ARM, Bangalore.
Atanu Kundu is working as an assistant professor in the Electronics & Communication Engineering Department at Heritage Institute of Technology. He has also served as a guest lecturer in the Department of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering at Jadavpur University. Kundu completed his PhD in 2016, MTech in 2009, and BTech in 2005. He has published 26 papers in refereed journals and international conferences and coauthored a book titled Technology Computer Aided Design: Simulation for VLSI MOSFET published by CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group. His research interest includes the “study of subthreshold analog and RF performance trends of multi-gate MOSFETs in sub-nanometer regime, biosensors.” At present, he is the chairman of IEEE EDS, Kolkata chapter; chapter advisor, IEEE EDS, Kalyani Govt. Engineering College Student Branch; and chapter advisor, IEEE EDS, Heritage Institute of Technology Student Branch chapter. Prior to that, he worked as the vice chairman of IEEE EDS, Kolkata chapter, and as joint secretary there and also a senior member of IEEE. He has organized several international/national conferences, workshops, and seminars.
Authors
Soumya Pandit is currently an assistant professor, Stage-II, at the Institute of Radio Physics and Electronics, University of Calcutta, India.
Dr. Pandit received his BSc (Physics, Honours), MSc (Electronic Science), and MTech (Radio Physics and Electronics) from the University of Calcutta in 1998, 2000, and 2002, respectively, and started his career as a lecturer at the Meghnad Saha Institute of Technology, under Maulana Abul Kalam Azad University of Technology. After graduating with a PhD in the domain of VLSI Design from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, he joined the Department of Radio Physics and Electronics at the University of Calcutta as an assistant professor in 2008.
Dr. Pandit researched in developing design methodologies and associated computer-aided design tools for a high-level synthesis of CMOS analog circuits in his PhD work. He served as a research consultant at the Advanced VLSI Design Laboratory at IIT Kharagpur from 2003 to 2008. During this period, he acted as a lead project scientist in several R&D projects sponsored by semiconductor industries like National Semiconductor (Santa Clara, California) and government agencies like DeitY. He had successfully taped out several integrated circuits in 0.8 micron and 0.18 micron CMOS technology. He has published more than 35 papers in leading international journals and conferences. He has authored a book entitled Nano-Scale CMOS Analog Circuits: Models and CAD Techniques for High-Level Design, published by CRC Press, USA, and several book chapters in edited volumes published by CRC Press and Springer. Dr. Pandit successfully completed four R&D projects sponsored by DST, Government of India; TEQIP, Phase-II, University of Calcutta; and others. He is currently the chief investigator of the Special Manpower Development Program for Chip to System Design (SMDPC2SD) Project at the University of Calcutta. He has developed the IC Design Laboratory at the Department of Radio Physics and Electronics, University of Calcutta, meant for postgraduate teaching and research students. His current research interest includes VLSI design, technology-aware CMOS device design, and circuit design.
Dr. Pandit is a senior member of IEEE, USA. He is currently the vice chair of SRC, Region 10, IEEE Electron Devices Society (EDS), USA. He is the founder chapter adviser of the IEEE EDS, University of Calcutta Student Chapter. He served as the chair of IEEE EDS Kolkata Chapter during 2014–2015.
Kaushik Roy completed his MTech in nanoscience and technology in 2012 from Jadavpur University, India. He is currently working as a senior research fellow in the School of Materials Science and Nanotechnology at the same university, and his field of interest includes different applications of noble metal nanoparticles.
Angsuman Sarkar is currently serving as an associate professor of electronics and communication engineering in Kalyani Government Engineering College, West Bengal. He had earlier served as lecturer in the ECE
Department, Jalpaiguri Government Engineering College, West Bengal, for 10 years. He received an MTech in VLSI and microelectronics from Jadavpur University. He completed his PhD from Jadavpur University in 2013. His current research interest spans around the study of short channel effects of sub–100 nm MOSFETs and nanodevice modeling. He is a senior member of IEEE, life member of the Indian Society for Technical Education, associate life member of Institution of Engineers (India), and executive committee member of the Electron Device Society, Kolkata Section. He has authored six books, five contributed book chapters, 48 journal papers in international refereed journals, and 24 research papers in national and international conferences.
Arghyadeep Sarkar received his MS in material science and engineering from National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan, in 2016. He is currently pursuing his PhD in an EECS International Graduate Program at National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan. He is a recipient of the Outstanding New Student scholarship award from National Chiao Tung University for his PhD studies.
Sanjit Kumar Swain received his BTech and MTech in electronics and telecommunication engineering from Biju Patnaik University of Technology, Odisha, India, in the years 2003 and 2011, respectively. He has a teaching experience of around 11 years as assistant professor in Silicon Institute of Technology, Bhubaneswar, Odisha. Currently, he is working toward a PhD in the field of nanodevices in the Department of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India. His PhD thesis is on performance analysis of NANO-MOS devices. He has attended many national and international conferences and seminars and published his research paper in many scientific journals.
Contributors
Sarosij Adak
Nano Device Simulation Laboratory
Jadavpur University
Kolkata, India
Amrita Banerjee
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering
Heritage Institute of Technology Kolkata, India
Swapan Das Department of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering
Jadavpur University Kolkata, India
Swapnadip De Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering
Meghnad Saha Institute of Technology
Kolkata, India
Arka Dutta
Department of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering
Jadavpur University
Kolkata, India
Chandan Kumar Ghosh
School of Material Science and Nanotechnology
Jadavpur University
Kolkata, India
Atanu Kundu Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering
Heritage Institute of Technology Kolkata, India
Soumya Pandit Institute of Radio Physics and Electronics University of Calcutta Kolkata, India
Kaushik Roy School of Materials Science and Nanotechnology
Jadavpur University
Kolkata, India
Sunipa Roy Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering
Guru Nanak Institute of Technology
Kolkata, India
Angsuman Sarkar Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering
Kalyani Government of Engineering College
Kalyani, India
Arghyadeep Sarkar Department of Electronics Engineering
National Chiao Tung University
Hsinchu, Taiwan, Republic of China
Chandan Kumar Sarkar
Department of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering
Jadavpur University
Kolkata, India
Sanjit Kumar Swain
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering
Silicon Institute of Technology
Orissa, India
Introduction: Motivation for Nanotechnology
Sunipa Roy, Chandan Kumar Ghosh, and Chandan Kumar Sarkar
Nanotechnology is a completely new branch of science and engineering that hit the market a few years ago. Nanotechnology is a revolution where even a 0.1 nm variation in particle size plays a significant role. Fundamentally, nanoscale implies a range from 1 to 100 nm. Nanotechnology can be best explained as “the development, synthesis, characterization, and application of materials and devices by tailoring their shape and size at the nanoscale.” Surprisingly, each permutation of shape and sizes produces a unique property with essentially new characteristics and potentiality.
The goal of this book is to provide some ideas about the optical and electrical properties of semiconducting and metallic materials at the nanoscale, and then to discuss some real-life applicational opportunities for fabricating devices. To start, we discuss basic quantum mechanics to understand the behavior of microscopic particles such as electrons and holes. We have also introduced the concept of quantum theory of radiation. It has been discussed that earlier experiments predicted the wave nature of radiation, and phenomena like interference and diffraction could be well established by Maxwell’s theory. In contrast to the particle nature of matter, the wave nature of matter is discussed conceptually. We then move on to a discussion of electronic behavior in metallic or semiconducting systems where the Sommerfeld free electron theory is addressed followed by Bloch theory. We have also qualitatively discussed the band structure and density of states for the bulk system, followed by nanoparticles. This energy band theory explains the electrical transport phenomenon at nanoscale.
Nanotechnology starts with quantum dots (QDs), defined as nanoparticles exhibiting three-dimensional quantum confinements, which leads to the development of many unique optical and transport properties depending on their shape and size. QDs could be prepared either from metal or from semiconductors. The reduction in the number of atoms in QDs results in the confinement of normally delocalized energy states when the diameter of QDs approaches the de Broglie wavelength of electrons in the conduction band or hole in the valence band. The result is that the energy difference between energy bands is increased with decreasing particle size.
Here, it is worth mentioning that the effect of van der Waals force is very significant in nanomaterials. This is the force between two atoms with a closed electronic shell, as in the inert gases, when no overlap in their wave function is observed. Due to van der Waals force, the binding energy associated with individual atoms is quite small (0.1 eV per atom), though the binding energies for ionic and covalent bonds are 100 times greater than the van der Waal bond. The origin of this force is polarization (mutual polarization) mediated and is the result of temporary transient dipoles on molecules leading to localized charge fluctuations. In this context, the concept of mutual polarization arises due to the localization of the electron charge cloud at any instant of time around the nucleus and generates instantaneous fluctuation of a dipole moment even when atoms have a zero averaged dipole moment. This instantaneous dipole moment on an atom generates an electric field, which in turn induces a dipole moment on other atoms or molecules, thus polarizing any nearby neutral atom. The resulting polarization of the two nearest atoms gives rise to an instantaneous attractive force between these two atoms. van der Waal forces are always active between two atoms or molecules, which could be stretched up to 10 nm and possibly 100 nm in the case of two surfaces. It is pertinent to mention that in between two surfaces, interaction is proportional to 1/r2 where r is the separation between the two surfaces.
There is some confusion among newcomers about the difference between nanoscience and nanotechnology. To make it understandable, one can state that nanoscience deals with the arrangement of atoms and understanding their fundamental properties at the nanoscale, whereas nanotechnology is the controlling of matter at atomic scale while synthesizing a new material with different exotic properties.
Nanotechnology is already receiving attention across all branches of engineering as it is an interdisciplinary area of research. The general population isn’t aware of its presence in daily life but it is emerging in medicine, energy and the environment, defense and security, and electronics and materials.
Research in this field mainly depends on two concepts: positional assembly and self-replication. Positional assembly is a technique to move molecular pieces into their proper places and maintain their position throughout the process. Molecular robots are one of the examples that carry out positional assembly. On the other hand, self-replication occurs by multiplying the positional arrangements in some habitual way. The applications of MEMS and nanotechnology are overlapping everywhere. An ideal example of this is the development by researchers at the Technical University of Munich of carbon nanotube–based small sensors that can be sprayed over the packet. These lilliput sensors detect the concentrations of volatile organic compound emitted by the product at very low concentrations. The output of the sensors is interfaced with a wireless device that alerts authorities to the infection of food and thus prevents damage.
This emerging technology is also a breakthrough in the domain of highly powerful computers and communication devices. According to Moore’s law, there is a limit to the number of components that can be fabricated onto a silicon wafer. Conventionally, circuits have been made on the wafer by removing the unwanted portion of the material in the region. In view of the upcoming emerging trend of nanotechnology, scientists suggest that it is possible to build chips with a single atom to make the devices smaller than ever, which is not possible using traditional methods of etching. If this becomes possible, there will be no extra atoms, implying that each atom bears its own meaning and a particular purpose. Conductors like nanowire would be only one atom thick. It would be remarkable if a data bit could be represented by the presence or absence of a single electron.
Nanotechnology is the study of phenomena and fine-tuning of materials at atomic level, where a significantly different property is obtained compared to a larger scale. Very recently, individuals and groups have been working on different aspects of nanotechnology such as renewable energy harvesting and converting it into useful electrical energy. Thermal, nuclear, wind, hydrolytic, and solar energy scavenging have ushered in a new area of research, “nanopiezotronics,” whose fundamental principle utilizes the coupled piezoelectric and semiconducting properties of nanowires and nanorods for fabricating electronic devices or systems such as field-effect transistors and diodes. The term nanopiezotronics was coined by Professor Zhong Lin Wang at Georgia Tech and is included in this book.
The physics of nanopiezotronics is based on the principle of a nanogenerator that converts mechanical energy into electric energy. When a piezoelectric material is twisted, electric charges collect on its surfaces. Further, bending the structures creates a charge separation, positive on one side and negative on the other. The output in the form of charge creation taken from the device, can be used to produce measurable electrical currents in a nanogenerator when an array of nanowires is bent and then released subsequently. As the structures that are responsible for the generation of electric current have a dimension at nanoscale, the term nanogenerator is most suitable.
The basic principle of a solar cell is the conversion of solar energy to chemical energy of electron-hole pairs followed by the conversion of chemical energy to electrical energy. Among all the heterojunction methods, solar cells have the greatest potential, highest efficiency, and greatest stability under light and thermal exposure due to the tunneling of electrons.
The use of graphene in solar cell technology has improved its efficiency tremendously. Graphene/Si heterojunction solar cells are a very recent area of research which have replaced dye-sensitized solar cells due to their high cost, and they have been included in this volume. Graphene absorbs only 2% of light and it is a very good conductor because it has only three covalent bonds per atom, compared to the full four in diamond. This makes it possible for electrons to move freely over a sheet of graphene to conduct electricity.
Like metals, this means it will absorb or reflect light because the free electrons can absorb the small amount of energy in the photon. Graphene/Si heterojunction solar cells can be assembled by transferring as-synthesized graphene films onto n-type Si.
With the advancement of technology, new industries are being formed, but the main concern is that they are polluting the environment and are hazardous to the health of every one of us. Here nanoparticles play a crucial role in minimizing pollution. For example, dye industries are leaving different azo dyes in the environment. Here the photocatalytic ability of nanoparticles is used to degrade these dyes into less harmful materials. In this context, it should be mentioned that the photocatalytic activity significantly depends on the shape and size of the nanoparticles since catalytic activity originates from surface atoms. It is a triumph of nanoscience and nontechnology that the fundamental relation between the properties of surface atoms and catalytic property is being examined under nanoscience where the search for new materials with superior activity is illustrated in the field of nanotechnology. Nanoparticles also exhibit a few environmental applications like antibacterial, anticancer, and antifungal activity.
This book is an amalgamation of nanoscale engineering, fundamental concepts, and novel nanodevices to prove where nano is these days, and what we can anticipate from it in the future. The chapters will highlight the fundamental ideas as well as ground-breaking applications of nano which will amaze the whole world. The authors have also provided images to make these concepts, the objectives, and the lab facilities more understandable for research students.
In the near future, nanotechnology will control the way we live, work, and communicate.
Introductory Quantum Mechanics for Nanoscience
Chandan Kumar Ghosh
2.3.2.1
2.3.4.1
2.3.4.2
2.3.5.1
2.3.5.2
2.3.6
2.3.6.1
2.1 Introduction
Our universe consists of radiation and matter. Until the end of the nineteenth century, all physical phenomena associated with the classical macroscopic material world could be explained in terms of the position and momentum of the particle and with the aid of force acting on it according to Newton’s law. Similarly, all the phenomena related to radiation could be well explained by the wave aspect of radiation according to Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory. During the late nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries, a few experiments were carried out in the fields of radiation and matter and the outcomes could not be explained through the existing theories given by Newton and Maxwell. Thus, scientists were forced to introduce new theories or concepts after accumulating the experimental evidence. In this chapter, we will subsequently discuss some key experiments and concepts developed from these experiments: particle nature of radiation, wave nature of particles, wave-particle duality of matter and radiation, and quantization of physical quantities such as energy
2.2 Quantum Theory of Radiation
Let us start with Young’s double slit experiment that involves two slits and radiation incidenting on them (schematically shown in Figure 2.1). If one slit is kept open, other remains closed and electromagnetic radiation falls on the slits, then it would be diffracted (deviate from its initial propagation direction) from the slits and this diffraction could be detected by placing a
FIGURE 2.1
Young’s double slit experiment.
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The Atlas.]
THE LATE DR. PRIESTLEY
[June 14, 1829.
The epithet of the late could not be applied to this celebrated character in the sense in which it has been turned upon some late wits and dinner-hunters as never being in time; if he had a fault, it was that of being precipitate and premature, of sitting down to the banquet which he had prepared for others before it was half-done; of seeing things with too quick and hasty a glance, of finding them in embryo, and leaving them too often in an unfinished state. This turn of his intellect had to do with his natural temper—he was impatient, somewhat peevish and irritable in little things, though not from violence or acerbity, but from seeing what was proper to be done quicker than others, and not liking to wait for an absurdity. On great and trying occasions, he was calm and resigned, having been schooled by the lessons of religion and philosophy, or, perhaps, from being, as it were, taken by surprise, and never having been accustomed to the indulgence of strong passions or violent emotions. His frame was light, fragile, neither strong nor elegant; and in going to any place, he walked on before his wife (who was a tall, powerful woman) with a primitive simplicity, or as if a certain restlessness and hurry impelled him on with a projectile force before others. His personal appearance was altogether singular and characteristic. It belonged to the class which may be called scholastic. His feet seemed to have been entangled in a gown, his features to have been set in a wig or taken out of a mould. There was nothing to induce you to say with the poet, that ‘his body thought’; it was merely the envelop of his mind. In his face there was a strange mixture of acuteness and obtuseness; the nose was sharp and turned up, yet rounded at the
end, a keen glance, a quivering lip, yet the aspect placid and indifferent, without any of that expression which arises either from the close workings of the passions or an intercourse with the world. You discovered the prim, formal look of the Dissenter—none of the haughtiness of the churchman nor the wildness of the visionary. He was, in fact, always the student in his closet, moved in or out, as it happened, with no perceptible variation: he sat at his breakfast with a folio volume before him on one side and a note-book on the other; and if a question were asked him, answered it like an absent man. He stammered, spoke thick, and huddled his words ungracefully together. To him the whole business of life consisted in reading and writing; and the ordinary concerns of this world were considered as a frivolous or mechanical interruption to the more important interests of science and of a future state. Dr. P might, in external appearance, have passed for a French priest, or the laybrother of a convent: in literature, he was the Voltaire of the Unitarians. He did not, like Mr. Southey, to be sure (who has been denominated the English Voltaire,) vary from prose to poetry, or from one side of a question to another; but he took in a vast range of subjects of very opposite characters, treated them all with the same acuteness, spirit, facility, and perspicuity, and notwithstanding the intricacy and novelty of many of his speculations, it may be safely asserted that there is not an obscure sentence in all he wrote. Those who run may read. He wrote on history, grammar, law, politics, divinity, metaphysics, and natural philosophy—and those who perused his works fancied themselves entirely, and were in a great measure, masters of all these subjects. He was one of the very few who could make abstruse questions popular; and in this respect he was on a par with Paley with twenty times his discursiveness and subtlety. Paley’s loose casuistry, which is his strong-hold and chief attraction, he got (every word of it) from Abraham Tucker’s Light of Nature. A man may write fluently on a number of topics with the same pen, and that pen a very blunt one; but this was not Dr. Priestley’s case; the studies to which he devoted himself with so much success and eclat required different and almost incompatible faculties. What for instance can be more distinct or more rarely combined than metaphysical refinement and a talent for experimental philosophy? The one picks up the grains, the other spins the threads of thought. Yet Dr. Priestley was certainly the best
controversialist of his day, and one of the best in the language; and his chemical experiments (so curious a variety in a dissenting minister’s pursuits) laid the foundation and often nearly completed the superstructure of most of the modern discoveries in that science. This is candidly and gratefully acknowledged by the French chemists, however the odium theologicum may slur over the obligation in this country, or certain fashionable lecturers may avoid the repetition of startling names. Priestley’s Controversy with Dr. Price is a masterpiece not only of ingenuity, vigour, and logical clearness, but of verbal dexterity and artful evasion of difficulties, if any one need a model of this kind. His antagonist stood no chance with him in ‘the dazzling fence of argument,’ and yet Dr. Price was no mean man. We should like to have seen a tilting-bout on some point of scholastic divinity between the little Presbyterian parson and the great Goliath of modern Calvinism, Mr. Irving; he would have had his huge Caledonian boar-spear, his Patagonian club out of his hands in a twinkling with his sharp Unitarian foil. The blear-eyed demon of vulgar dogmatism and intolerance would have taken his revenge by gnashing his teeth, rolling his eyes in a resistless phrenzy, and denouncing as out of the pale of Christian charity a man who placed his chief comfort in this life in his hope of the next, and who would have walked firmly and cheerfully to a stake in the fulness of his belief of the Christian revelation. Out upon these pulpit demigorgons, ‘Anthropagi and men who eat each other,’ to gratify the canine malice and inward gnawing of their morbid understandings, and worse than the infuriated savage, not contented to kill the body, would ‘cast both body and soul into hell;’ and unless they can see from their crazy thrones of spiritual pride and mountebank effrontery, the whole world cowering like one outstretched congregation in a level sea of bare heads and upturned wondering looks at their feet, prone and passive, and aghast under the thunders of their voice, the flashes of their eye—would snatch Heaven’s own bolt to convert the solid globe into a sea of fire to torture millions of their fellow-creatures in for the slightest difference of opinion from them, or dissent from the authority of a poor, writhing, agonised reptile, who works himself up in imagination by raving and blasphemy into a sort of fourth person in the Trinity, and would avenge his mortified ambition, his moonstruck-madness, and ebbing popularity as the wrongs of the
M H !—‘Nay, an you mouth, we’ll rant as well as you!’—To return to Dr. Priestley and common sense, if it be possible to get down these from the height of melo-dramatic and apocalyptic orthodoxy. We do not place the subject of this notice in the first class of metaphysical reasoners either for originality or candour: but in boldness of inquiry, quickness, and elasticity of mind, and ease in making himself understood, he had no superior. He had wit too, though this was a resource to which he resorted only in extreme cases. Mr. Coleridge once threw a respectable dissenting congregation into an unwonted forgetfulness of their gravity, by reciting a description, from the pen of the transatlantic fugitive, of the manner in which the first man might set about making himself, according to the doctrine of the Atheists. Mr. Coleridge put no marks of quotation either before or after the passage, which was extremely grotesque and ludicrous; but imbibed the whole of the applause it met with in his flickering smiles and oily countenance. Dr. Priestley’s latter years were unhappily embittered by his unavailing appeals to the French philosophers in behalf of the Christian religion; and also by domestic misfortunes, to which none but a Cobbett could have alluded in terms of triumph. We see no end to the rascality of human nature; all that there is good in it is the constant butt of the base and brutal.
The Atlas.]
SECTS AND PARTIES
[August 2, 1829.
We from our souls sincerely hate all cabals and coteries; and this is our chief objection to sects and parties. People who set up to judge for themselves on every question that comes before them, and quarrel with received opinions and established usages, find so little sympathy from the rest of the world that they are glad to get any one to agree with them, and with that proviso the poorest creature becomes their Magnus Apollo. The mind sets out indeed in search of truth and on a principle of independent inquiry; but is so little able to do without leaning on someone else for encouragement and support, that we presently see those who have separated themselves from the mere mob, and the great masses of prejudice and opinion, forming into little groups of their own and appealing to one another’s approbation, as if they had secured a monopoly of common sense and reason. Wherever two or three of this sort are gathered together, there is self-conceit in the midst of them. ‘You grant me judgment, and I grant you wit’—is the key-note from which an admirable duett, trio, or quartett of the understanding may be struck up at any time to the entire satisfaction of the parties concerned, though the byestanders may be laughing at or execrating the unwelcome discord. The principle of all reform is this, that there is a tendency to dogmatism, to credulity and intolerance in the human mind itself, as well as in certain systems of bigotry or superstition; and until reformers are themselves aware of, and guard carefully against, the natural infirmity which besets them in common with all others, they must necessarily run into the error which they cry out against. Without this self-knowledge and circumspection, though the great
wheel of vulgar prejudice and traditional authority may be stopped or slackened in its course, we shall only have a number of small ones of petulance, contradiction, and partisanship set a-going to our frequent and daily annoyance in its place: or (to vary the figure) instead of crowding into a common stage-coach or hum-drum vehicle of opinion to arrive at a conclusion, every man will be for mounting his own velocipede, run up against his neighbours, and exhaust his breath and agitate his limbs in vain. In Mr. Bentham’s Book of Fallacies we apprehend are not to be found the crying sins of singularity, rash judgment, and self-applause. What boots it, we might ask, to get rid of tests and subscription to thirty-nine articles of orthodox belief, if, in lieu of this wholesale and comprehensive mode of exercising authority over our fellows, a D is placed upon the table at breakfast time, sits down with us to dinner, or is laid on our pillow at night, rigidly prescribing what we are to eat, drink, and how many hours we are to sleep? Or be it that the authority of Aristotle and the schoolmen is gone by, what shall the humble and serious inquirer after truth profit by it, if he still cannot say that his soul is his own for the sublime dulness of Mr. Maculloch, and the Dunciad of political economists? The imprimatur of the Star Chamber, the cum privilegio regis is taken off from printed books— what does the freedom of the press or liberality of sentiment gain, if a board of Utility at Charing Cross must affix its stamp, before a jest can find its way into a newspaper, or must knock a flower of speech on the head with the sledge-hammer of cynical reform? The clovenfoot, the overweening, impatient, exclusive spirit breaks out in different ways, in different times and circumstances. While men are quite ignorant and in the dark, they trust to others, and force you to do so under pain of fire and faggot:—when they have learned a little they think they know every thing, and would compel you to conform to that opinion, under pain of their impertinence, maledictions, and sarcasms, which are the modern rack and thumb-screw. The mode of torture, it must be confessed, is refined, though the intention is the same. Their ill-temper and want of toleration fall the hardest on their own side, for those who adhere to fashion and power care no more about their good or ill word, than about the short, unmelodious gruntings of any other sordid stye. But how is any poor devil who has got into their clutches to shelter himself from their malevolence and party-spite? Why, by enlisting under their banners, swearing to all
that they say, and going all lengths with them. Otherwise, he is a black sheep in the flock, and made a butt of by the rest. This is a selfevident process. For the fewer people any sect or party have to sympathise with them, the more entire must that sympathy be: it must be without flaw or blemish, as a set-off to the numbers on the other side; and they who set up to be wiser than all the world put together, cannot afford to acknowledge themselves wrong in any particular. You must, therefore, agree to all their sense or nonsense, allow them to be judges equally of what they do or do not understand, adopt their cant, repeat their jargon, have no notions but what they have, caricature their absurdities, make yourself obnoxious for their satisfaction, and a slave and lacquey to their opinions, humours, and convenience; or they black-ball you, send you to Coventry, and play the devil with you. Thus, for any writer in a highly enlightened and liberal morning paper, not merely to question the grand arcanum of population or the doctrine of rent, would be both great and petty treason; but it would be as much as his place was worth, to suggest a hint that Mrs. Chatterley is not a fine woman and a charming actress. Fanatics and innovators formerly appealed in support of their dreams and extravagancies to inspiration and an inward light; the modern race of philosophical projectors, not having this resource, are obliged to fortify themselves in a double crust of confidence in themselves, and contempt for their predecessors and contemporaries. It is easy to suppose what a very repulsive sort of people they must be! Indeed, to remedy what was thought a hard exterior and an intolerable air of assumption on the part of the professors of the new school, a machine, it is said, has been completed in Mr. Bentham’s garden in Westminster, which turns out a very useful invention of jurisprudence, morals, logic, political economy, constitutions, and codifications, as infallibly and with as little variation as a barrel-organ plays ‘God save the King,’ or ‘Rule Britannia’:—nay, so well does it work and so little trouble or attendance does it require from the adepts, that the latter mean to sign a truce with gravity and ‘wise saws,’ some of them having entered at the bar, others being about to take orders in the church, others having got places in the India-house, and all being disposed to let the Bentham-machine shift for itself! Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci:—Mr. Bentham is old, and doubtless has made his will! Reformers will hardly see themselves in religious schismatics
and sectarians, whom they despise. Perhaps others may be struck with the likeness. Rational dissenters, for example, think, because they alone profess the title, they alone possess the thing. All rational dissenters are with them wise and good. An Unitarian is another name for sense and honesty; and must it not be so, when to those of an opposite faith it is a name of enmity and reproach? But the intolerance on one side, though it accounts for, does not disprove the weakness on the other. We have heard of devotees who employ a serious baker, a serious tailor, a serious cobbler, etc. So there are staunch reformists who would prefer a radical compositor, a radical stationer or bookbinder, to all others; and think little of those on their side of the question who, besides adhering to a principle, have not, in their over-zeal and contempt for their adversaries, contrived to render it offensive or ridiculous. A sound practical consistency does not satisfy the wilful restlessness of the advocates of change. They must have the piquancy of startling paradoxes, the pruriency of romantic and ticklish situations, the pomp of itinerant professors of patriotism and placarders of their own lives, travels, and opinions. Why must a man stand up in a three-cornered hat and canonicals to bear testimony against the Christian religion, and in favour of reform? We hate all such impertinent masquerading and double entendre. Those who are accustomed to judge for themselves, and express their convictions at some risk and loss, are too apt to come from thinking that opinions may be right, though they are singular, to conclude that they are right, because they are singular. The more they differ from the world, the more convinced they are, because it flatters their self-love; and they are only quite satisfied and at their ease when they shock and disgust every one around them. They no longer consider the connexion between the conclusion and the premises, but between any idle hypothesis and their personal vanity. They cling obstinately to opinions, as they have been hastily formed; and patronize every whim that they fancy is their own. They are most confident of ‘what they are least assured;’ and will stake all they are worth on the forlorn hope of their own imaginary sagacity and clearness. An idiosyncrasy steals into every thing; their way is best. Always regarding the world at large as an old dotard, they think any single individual in it quite beneath their notice—unless it is an alter idem of the select coterie—neither consult you about their affairs, nor deign you an answer on your own, and have a model of
perfection in their minds to which they refer all public and private transactions. There are methodists in business as well as in religion, who have a peculiar happy knack in folding a letter, or in saying How d’ye do, who postpone the main object to some pragmatical theory or foppish punctilio, and who might take for their motto—all for conceit or the world well lost.
CONVERSATIONS AS GOOD AS REAL (1)
The Atlas.]
[September 20, 1829.
T.—Windham was very intimate with Gilray afterwards—or perhaps before; for he also had been on both sides.
J.—What I object to in Hogarth is, that he was not accomplished enough even for the task he undertook. An instance occurred the other day. A servant-girl had been decoyed from her situation, and on complaint being made before the magistrate, the officers traced her to Duke’s-place, and brought her back to her friends in WardourStreet. She was dressed up quite in the height of the fashion; and every one that went to see her, came away astonished at her perfect beauty. Could Hogarth have painted this? Yet here was a scene quite in his way. He selects what is bad in St. Giles’s, not what is best in nature. That old Mother W—— lives for ever. It was she who decoyed away Emily Coventry that sat to Sir Joshua for his Thais. She was a chimney-sweeper’s daughter, or something of that kind; but she was a vast beauty, and Mother W—— found her out in spite of her rags and dirt. She had a hawk’s eye for anything of this sort. I sat facing her once in an upper box at the Opera. I never saw such an expression—her look went through you.
T.—But I suppose you looked at her again.
J.—Fielding has tried to describe Sophia as a beauty, but makes a wretched hand of it. He says first she was a beauty; and then to let you know what sort of a beauty she was, that she was like the Venus of Medici; then that her nose inclined to be Roman, which the Venus de Medici’s does not; then that she resembled Kneller’s portrait of Lady Ranelagh, which is like neither. The truth is, he did not know
what she was like; nor that he could not in words give a description of beauty, which is the painter’s province.
T.—Coleridge used to remark that description was the vice of poetry, and allegory of painting.
J.—Nothing can be better said. Since you told me that remark of his about Paul and Virginia, he has risen vastly in my estimation. Again, why does the correspondent in the Atlas take me up short for saying that ‘we laugh at a person who is rolled in the gutter?’ He observes on this, ‘if it is an accident, the laughter is silly, and not a case in point; if inflicted as a punishment for some petty injustice, we do not laugh, but rub our hands.’ So that we are to laugh in neither case. Is the ridicule merited where the cobbler, in the ‘Election Dinner,’ has smutted the face of his next neighbour? Or does the cobbler laugh the less, or will he not laugh on for ever, on this account? Has not Hogarth immortalised this piece of silliness in this disgraceful scene? Who will set limits (by the author’s crambo) to the length to which he lolls out his tongue, or to the portentous rolling of his eyes in a squint of ecstasy? Is the sly leer and drooping of the widow’s eyelids, or the position of the parson’s hands in the ‘Harlot’s Funeral,’ drawing as well as character and invention? Or is the fighting of the dog and the man for the bone on a perfect footing of equality (to show that hunger levels all distinctions), or the mother letting the child fall over the wall in the ‘Gin-lane,’ or the girl in the ‘Noon,’ ‘with her pie-dish tottering like her virtue, and the contents running over,’ (as I have seen it somewhere expressed,) an example of skill in drawing? It is easy to paint a face without a nose, or with a wry one; the difficulty is to make it straight. Few persons can draw a circle; any one may draw a crooked line.
T.—But has not Hogarth hit off the exact character and expression; and is not that a proof of the painter’s hand and eye?
J.—It may be so; but you cannot be sure of it. The correspondent of the paper laughs at the idea of Hogarth’s coming under the article of writing. He has come under the article of writing. Does not the critic speak of his ‘immortal tales?’ Does Mr. Lamb expatiate on the drawing, colour, and effects of light and shade, or only on the moral and story? He has left out one half of the language of painting in the prints; and they are the better for it. Nor do I see what objection there is to the comparison of Hogarth to buffoons on the stage. For
my part, I think Liston comes much nearer to Hogarth than Emery’s Tyke; and I am sure his Lord Grizzle is just as good in its way as anything can possibly be. Why then does the critic scout the comparison? Because it would be ridiculous to say, that Liston’s Lord Grizzle is as fine as Mrs. Siddons’s Lady Macbeth; that both fulfilled their parts equally, and that neither could do more without infringing on the integrity of their characters. Yet if the dignity of the subject is to be left out of the question, Liston may be put into the scale with Mrs. Siddons just as well as Emery; but if not, then neither one nor the other can. Any one for me may say he likes Punch and the puppet-show as well as the finest tragedy—I should think it honest and natural enough—but I hate putting up at a half-way house between farce and tragedy, and pretending that there is no difference in the case. Persons who have no taste for, but an aversion to whatever is great and elevated, are ashamed openly to patronise farce, lest they should be laughed at; and they, therefore, get something intermediate between that and tragedy, and set it up as the finest thing in the world, to escape ridicule and satisfy their own perverse inclination. It is necessary to set one’s face against such vulgar critics; for, like other vulgar people, if you do not keep them quite out, they will constantly encroach and turn you out of your most settled convictions with their mongrel theories.
T.—What is the aim of all high tragedy? It is to resolve the sense of pain or suffering into the sense of power by the aid of imagination, and by grandeur of conception and character. What is the object of Hogarth’s tragicomedy? To reverse this order: that is, he gives us the extremest distress in the most revolting circumstances and in connection with the most unfeeling and weakest characters, so as either to produce the utmost disgust or excite as little sympathy as possible. Why must maternal affection be displayed, and, as it were, outraged in the strength of attachment to a most brutish and worthless moon-calf of a son? The moral may be strictly true, but the mode of conveying it is no less a penance. Why must the feeling of love be exemplified in the persevering attachment of the victim of seduction to her profligate and contemptible seducer? This is essential to Hogarth’s conception of passion, that it should be at variance with its object, incongruous, and bordering on the absurd and ludicrous. Why must a fine feeling or sentiment be dragged through the kennel or stuck in the pillory before it can be tolerated in
his graphic designs? There is neither unity nor grandeur. Mr. Lamb admires the expression of the losing gamester in the ‘Rake’s Progress:’ it is exactly what Liston would give in attempting such a part, and not unlike him. Why show the extreme of passion in faces unsusceptible of it, or kill the sympathy by the meanness and poverty of the associations? Mr. Lamb despises Kean’s face in Othello: I prefer it to any of Hogarth’s tragic faces, which are generally of the mock-heroic class.[59] The Methodist preacher in the cart with the Idle Apprentice is another Mawworm, a fantastic figure, tossed about by the wind or the spirit, though the conception would be fine for a novel or written story: the apprentice himself is a scare-crow, the sport of the mob, with whose indifference you take part, not with the sufferings of the hero, if he is supposed to have any. The whole is a game at tragic cross-purposes. The sublimity (such as it is) rests on a foundation of the squalid and scurrilous. The incongruous was Hogarth’s element, and he could not get out of his own or (what is I fear) the national character, which delights in laughing at and exulting over the defects and mishaps of others, not from any concern for them, but as a foil to its own discontented humour and conscious want of higher resources. Defoe, who was in the same age and class, had more imagination. His Robinson Crusoe is in perfect keeping. He is not solitary, but solitude: from being shut out from the world, he fills the universe with himself, and his being expands to the circumference of the ocean and sky. Hogarth would have shut him up in a workhouse or a gaol, with boys hooting at him through the bars, and no escape left on the wings of the imagination or the strength of will. This may be very intense, but it is not to my taste. A disciple of this school should not go to see Madame Pasta act. He would like Madame Pesaroni better, for she is ugly, squat, and her voice is masculine and loud. The other, who is all harmony, would oppress and make him uneasy for want of some salvo to his self-love. Would a critic of this order like to see a tragic actress with a wooden leg? For this is Hogarth. Mr. Lamb admires Moll Flanders; would he marry Moll Flanders? There ought to be something in common in our regard for the original and the copy. A taste for the odd and eccentric eats like a canker into the mind; and if not checked, drives out all relish for the noble and consistent as stiff and pedantic. The drollery is certainly less; and if there is not some set-off in earnestness and dignity, the serious must be at a low ebb indeed, and
Hudibras is finer than Paradise Lost. It would be a proof of bad taste to like to look at a mean or ill-formed face, for the sake of laughing at it, rather than at a fine one. And so in art: the representation of brutality, coarseness, and want of capacity and feeling is surely less desirable than the representation of the opposite qualities; or it is saying that you laugh at and despise a thing for falling short of a certain excellence and perfection, and when it gains that excellence and perfection, it is no better than it was before.
J.—You remember the drawing I showed you by Lane, after the ‘Possessed Boy’ of Domenichino? There was there infinite sensibility, infinite delicacy, agony with sweetness, beauty in the midst of distortion. You saw there that every fine feeling had passed through the painter’s mind, or he could not have expressed them; you were made to sympathise with them, and to understand and revere them as a part of your own nature. Compared with works like this, which are the pure mirrors of truth and beauty, Hogarth’s subjects are the very ‘measles’ of art—the scum and offal—it is like going on a voyage in a convict-ship, with an alternation of the same humours and the same horrors—it is a bad prospect for life.
T.—There is some limit. The late Edinburgh murders would not bear being transferred to the canvass, though the group at Ambrose’s would make a subject for a sketch, so nice are the distinctions of taste.
J.—The comic sets off the serious by contrast, and is a necessary relief; but how little a way does the sense of defect go towards a conception of, or power to embody the reverse! Look at Hogarth’s attempts at dignified subjects, and see how poor and feeble they are. His ‘Pool of Bethesda’ is pitiable; but in the burlesque composition, where he introduces the devil cutting away the leg of the stool on which St. Paul is preaching, he is himself again, and worthy of all imitation. The critic in the Atlas asks what I mean by originality, as if I thought it independent of any prototypes in nature? No, originality consists in seeing nature for yourself; but it does not follow that everyone can do this or is to see nature alike, or there would be nothing remarkable in it.
T.—Crabbe is an original writer; but it is to be hoped he will have few followers. Mr. Lamb, by softening the disagreeableness of one of his tales, has taken out the sting.
J.—Hogarth is an exception to general rules; I said so before. He is the only great comic painter; and he is so for this reason—that painting is not the mother-tongue of comedy. Would not this be allowed of sculpture? I have not seen the ‘Tam O’Shanter’; but some Scotch critics are already, I hear, for exploding the antique. Painting is a dry, plodding art; a bottle-nose, if you come to examine it closely, becomes a very dull affair. We talk of a hump-back or a sore leg, which is enough of a good thing; the painter is obliged to give them entire, which is too much. Neither can he carry off this grossness by brilliancy of illustration, or rapidity of narrative. The eye and the mind take in a group or a succession of incidents in an instant; the hand follows lamely and slowly after, and naturally loses, in the mechanical details of each object, the surprise, odd starts, and contrasts, which are the life of comedy. Hogarth alone, by his double allusions, and by his giving motion (which is time) overcame this difficulty, or painted as if he were no painter, but set down each figure by a stroke of the pencil, or in a kind of short-hand of the art, being obliged to run neither into caricature nor still-life. This extreme facility or tenaciousness (amounting to a two-fold language) was his peculiar forte, and that in which he was, and will remain, unrivalled. Ducrow acts romances on horseback; but it is not the best way of acting them; and few will imitate him without breaking their necks.
T.—Do not the same remarks apply in some measure to painting history?
J.—In some measure, they do; and therefore grand and dignified subjects are in general to be preferred to the more violent and distressing ones. Therefore Titian’s portraits are on a par with history. You who admire Titian, how you must look at Hogarth! You see they avoid the sight of blood even on the stage. In short, it is a question, whether low and disagreeable subjects are fit to be painted; and Sir Joshua, among others, did not much approve of them. It is not a question whether grace and grandeur are fit subjects for painting—this alone settles the preference, and is some excuse for the author of the Discourses in perhaps making it a little too exclusive. If it were true that Hogarth is universal, or contains the highest kind of excellence, no one would dispute about him. After all, a hurdygurdy is neither a lute nor an organ.
CONVERSATIONS AS GOOD AS REAL (2)
The Atlas.]
[November 1, 1829.
T.—Was I not right in stating it to be an error to suppose that character is one thing, and to be judged of from a single circumstance? The simplicity of language constantly runs us into false abstractions. We call a man by one name, and forget the heap of contradictions of which he is composed. An acquaintance was wondering not long ago, how a man of sense that he mentioned could be guilty of such absurdities in practice. I answered that a man’s understanding often had no more influence over his will than if they belonged to two different persons; nor frequently so much, since we sometimes consented to be governed by advice, though we could not controul our passions if left to ourselves.
J.—That is very true; but I do not see why you should express so much eagerness about it, as if your life depended on it.
T.—Nor I neither: I was not aware that I did so.
J.—You lay too much stress on these speculative opinions and abstruse distinctions. You fancy it is the love of truth: it is quite as much the pride of understanding. Are you as ready to be convinced yourself as you are bent on convincing others? You and those like you pretend to benefit mankind by discovering something new; but you can find out nothing that has not been invented and forgotten a hundred times. The world turns round just the same, in spite of the chirping of all the grasshoppers or squabbles of all the philosophers upon it. I told G. so the other day, who did not much like it—I said he gave a power of creation to the human mind, which did not belong to it. Even Shakspeare, who was so original and saw so deeply into the
springs of nature, created nothing: he only brought forward what existed before. I said, ‘You may observe and combine, but you can add nothing—neither a colour to the rainbow, nor a note to music, nor a faculty to the mind. And it’s well that you cannot; for my belief is, that if you could create the smallest thing, the world would not last three months, so little are you to be trusted with power.’ G. retorted by a charge of misanthropy; and I asked him who were those dignifiers of the species to whom he wished me to look up with so much awe and reverence. He answered, somewhat to my surprise, Burke, Fox, and Sheridan. I expected he would have named Lord Bacon, or some of those. I was not much staggered by his authorities.
T.—I did not know G. was so parliamentary: he might, while he was about it, have mentioned the three last speakers of the House of Commons, Lord Colchester, Lord Sidmouth, and Mr. Onslow.
J.—He should have gone farther off: it is distance that hides defects and magnifies. So it is with that prejudice of classical learning. You lock up names in an obsolete language, and they become sacred. I do not wish to speak against a classical education; it refines and softens, I grant; and I see the want of it in Cobbett, and others, who may be regarded as upstarts in letters. But surely it often gives a false estimate of men and things. Every one brought up in colleges, and drugged with Latin and Greek for a number of years, firmly believes that there have been about five people in the world, and that they are dead. All that actually exists, he holds to be nothing. The world about him is a phantasmagoria: he considers it a personal affront that any one should have common sense, or be able to find his way along the street, without looking for it in Plato or Aristotle. The classical standard turns shadows into realities and realities into shadows. A man of sense is trying to get the better of this early prejudice all his life; and hardly succeeds, after infinite mortification, at last. The dunces and pedants are the best off; they never suspect that there is any wisdom in the world but that of the ancients, of which they are the depositaries.
T.—I do not think G. goes that length; but he only exists in his passion for books and for literary fame. You cannot shock him more than by questioning any established reputation.
J.—Yes, he conceives himself to be a free-thinker, and yet is a bigot in his way.
T.—Men will have some idol, some mythology of their own—the dii majores or minores—something that they think greater than themselves, or that they would wish to resemble; and G. would be as angry at a sceptic on the subject of Burke’s style, as a Catholic would be at a heretic who denied the virtues and miracles of his patron saint.
The Atlas]
TRIFLES LIGHT AS AIR
[September 27 and October 4, 1829.
I. There is no flattery so gross or extravagant but it will be acceptable. It leaves some sting of pleasure behind, since its very excess seems to imply that there must be some foundation for it. Tell the ugliest person in the world that he is the handsomest, the greatest fool that he is a wit, and he will believe and thank you. There is a possibility at least that you may be sincere. Even the sycophant’s ironical laugh turns to a smile of self-complacency at our own fancied perfections.
II. There is no abuse so foul or unprovoked but some part of it will stick. Ill words break the charm of good deeds. Call a man names all the year round, and at the end of the year (for no other reason) his best friends will not care to mention his name. It is no pleasant reflection that a man has been accused, however unjustly, of a folly or a crime. We involuntarily associate words with things; and the imagination retains an unfavourable impression long after the understanding is disabused. Or if we repel the charge and resent the injustice, this is making a toil of a pleasure, and our cowardice and indolence soon take part with the malice of mankind. The assailants are always the more courageous party. It degrades a man even to be subjected to undeserved reproach, for it seems as if without some flaw or blemish no one would dare to attack him; so that the viler and more unprincipled the abuse, the lower it sinks, not him who offers, but him who is the object of it, in general estimation. If we see a man covered with mud we avoid him without expressing the cause. The favourites of the public, like Cæsar’s wife, must not be suspected;
and it is enough if we admire and bear witness to the superiority of another under the most favourable circumstances—to do this in spite of secret calumny and vulgar clamour is a pitch of generosity which the world has not arrived at.
III. A certain manner makes more conquests than either wit or beauty. Suppose a woman to have a graceful ease of deportment, and a mild self-possession pervading every look and tone of voice; this exercises an immediate influence on a person of an opposite and irritable temperament—it calms and enchants him at once. It is like soft music entering the room—from that time he can only breathe in her presence, and to be torn from her is to be torn from himself for ever.
IV. Fame and popularity are disparate quantities, having no common measure. A poet or painter now living may be as great as any poet or painter that ever did live; and if he be so, he will be so thought of by future ages, but he cannot by the present. Persons of overweening vanity and short-sighted ambition, who would forestall the meed of fame, show themselves unworthy of it, for they reduce it to a level with the reputation they have already earned. They should surely leave something to look forward to. It is weighing dross against gold—comparing a meteor with the polar star. Lord Byron’s narrowness or presumption in this respect was remarkable. What! did he not hope to live two hundred years himself, that he should say it was merely a fashion to admire Milton and Shakspeare as it was the fashion to admire him? Those who compare Sir Walter Scott with Shakspeare do not know what they are doing. They may blunt the feeling with which we regard Shakspeare as an old and tried friend, though they cannot transfer it to Sir Walter Scott, who is, after all, but a new and dazzling acquaintance. To argue that there is no difference in the circumstances is not to put the author of ‘Waverley’ into actual possession of the reversion of fame, but to say that he shall never enjoy it, since it is no better than a chimera and an illusion. It is striking at the foundation of true and lasting renown, and overturning with impatient and thoughtless hands the proud pre-eminence, the golden seats and blest abodes which the predestined heirs of immortality wait for beyond the tomb. The living are merely candidates (more or less successful) for popular applause, the dead are a religion, or they are nothing.
