ABSTRACT
Perhaps the best motivation to this chapter dealing with nanostructures comes from Kittel’s book [10.1]:
The term nanostructure denotes a condensed matter structure having a minimum dimension approximately between 1 nm (10 A) and 10 nm (100 A). These structures may be ne particles, ne wires, or thin lms. Fine particles typically contain between 10 and 1000 atoms. Semiconductor technology has made it possible to fabricate small pools of electrons called in various ways: single-electron transistors, quantum dots, articial atoms, Coulomb islands, or quantum corrals. The unusual physical properties of nanostructures compared with bulk solids are attributed to several factors:
• The ratio of the number of atoms on the surface to the number of atoms in the interior may be of the order of unity.
