This course provides physical foundations to understand the response of different classes of materials to electromagnetic fields, focusing on their electrical, optical, and magnetic properties, and on the basic functioning of devices that exploit such properties. The lectures build on classical and quantum mechanical concepts to provide microscopic understanding and modelling.

This course focuses on magnetic phenomena that occur in ultra thin films, heterostructures, and nanomagnets, with emphasis on effects not encountered in bulk materials and on spintronics. The course will provide an introduction to magnetic textures, magnetotransport, charge-spin conversion, spin torques and their application to detect and manipulate the magnetization of spintronic devices.

This course introduces classical and quantum mechanical concepts for the understanding of material properties from a microscopic point of view. The lectures focus on the static and dynamic properties of crystals, the formation of chemical bonds and electronic bands in metals, and semiconductors, and on the thermal and electrical properties that emerge from this analysis.

This course provides physical foundations to understand the response of different classes of materials to electromagnetic fields, focusing on the dielectric and optical properties of materials, and on the basic functioning of devices that exploit such properties, including photodiodes, photovoltaic cells, LEDs, and laser diodes.