CM4251 - CHARACTERIZATION TECHNIQUES IN MATERIALS CHEMISTRY

Module Overview: ​UHV systems/XPS/STM/AFM/SEM/TEM/Contact angle measurement/Thermal analysis/UV-Vis/IR/Mechanical properties 

Overall Difficulty: Average

Difficulty of Assessment:

Pop Quizzes: Very easy 

In-class Presentation: Average 

Mid-Terms: Easy 

Finals: Easy  

Pace of Module: Just Nice

Enjoyability: 5/5

Usefulness: 5/5

Workload of Module (Average Number of hours spent per week):

To learn the content: 5 hours

To complete assignments: 1 hour

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How did you find the contents (how it was delivered) and the assessments of the module?

Prof Lu Jiong is very knowledgeable in this field, and he can take questions very well. The mid-terms and finals were very doable if you listened and understood his lectures, the questions are very similar to his tutorials and are open-ended (Choose a characterization technique to resolve the sample and explain why). He will award marks for your answers as long as you can justify why logically. The presentation is slightly harder since online resources for the various characterization techniques are quite complicated and require some heavy readings. Assessments are all open book so understanding is more important than blind memorization for this module. 

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How was your experience with the module?

The exams are very scoreable where you can get close to full marks as long as you understand the basis of each characterization technique taught. I think this module is essential especially if you read a lot of research papers in materials chemistry as this module teaches you how to interpret the images always shown in research papers. These techniques may involve quite a lot of physics/mathematics, but Prof Lu Jiong breaks it down into very digestible terms for chemists to understand. Towards the last 3 weeks, it is just presentations by fellow classmates and guest lecturers, and these contents are non-assessable, so in a sense this module is quite low workload. Tip would be to study the first few topics well (STM/AFM/XPS) as they are heavily tested in mid-terms and are repeated in finals. You can read Prof Lu Jiong publications too as he sometimes takes some images from his papers and asks you how to characterize that sample and why. His exams always involve calculations (same as his tutorials) and open-ended questions on characterization (same as tutorials too).