Electronic Structure of Solids Basic Notions

In the following we give a brief account of the main concepts useful in the qualitative analysis of the electronic structure of solids (6,7]. The discussion, which is purposely restricted to a very basic level, is organized so as to strongly emphasize the parallelism between the tools used in the theory of chemical bonding in molecules and solids [8]. 

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In the present contribution, we will examine the fundamentals of such an approach. We first describe some basic notions of the tight-binding method to build the COs of an infinite periodic solid. Then we consider how to analyze the nature of these COs from the viewpoint of orbital interaction by using some one-dimensional (ID) examples. We then introduce the notion of density of states (DOS) and its chemical analysis, which is especially valuable in understanding the structure of complex 3D sohds or in studying surface related phenomena. Later, we introduce the concept of Fermi surface needed to examine the transport properties of metallic systems and consider the different electronic instabilities of metals. Finally, a brief consideration of the more frequently used computational approaches to the electronic structure of solids is presented. 

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