Atomic-scale modeling in education

QuantumWise is offering schools and universities the possibility to use its professional atomic-scale modeling software package Atomistix ToolKit (ATK) in their teaching and course work at a significantly reduced price.

As the awareness and impact of nanotechnology grows in industry, not least for electronics, atomic-scale modeling is rapidly becoming a very important tool. Computer simulations are today used to predict material and device properties, and constitute a valuable complement to experiments, which at the nanoscale become increasingly expensive and cumbersome. Scientists and engineers that early in their education have acquired skills within computational modeling will be very attractive on the job market in the future.

Some of the particular benefits of ATK for teaching are:

• Easy to use: The graphical user interface enables students to focus on the essential tasks of defining the system geometry and analyzing the results, rather than spending time on configuring the software itself or tuning numerical parameters.
• Comprehensive: Calculations can be based on a variety methods, covering first-principles, semi-empirical tight-binding models, and also classical potentials. This allows the students to go far beyond the usual toy models of basic quantum mechanics and study realistic nanoscale systems. In more advanced courses, the students can even use to software to learn about the principles of density-functional theory and the other underlying models, and discuss their respective strengths and weaknesses.
• Unique & advanced: ATK is the only commerical tool that can perform electron transport simulations, and the software also contains advanced models for optical properties, accuracte band gap calculations via meta-GGA, calculation of complex band structures, projected DOS, etc.

On the following pages you can get some inspiration on how ATK can be used to teach concepts of nanotechnology, basic quantum mechanics, solid state physics, molecular physics, etc.

Molecules
Carbon nanotubes and graphene
Crystals
Professional atomic-scale modeling

Special terms and conditions apply for the educational license, compared to the usual licenses for ATK and VNL. Please contact QuantumWise for more information.