Science is happening!

Well, it’s been a month, and things have developed quite a bit here at Harvard!  I can’t believe it’s already been five weeks.  At this point, I really only have three more weeks to get all the results I can before I need to make a paper, presentation, and poster–and get ready to fly to Minnesota for the “NNIN Convocation” (for the exceptionally curious:  http://www.nano.umn.edu/nninreuconvocation2010/) on August 11.

There were several hoops to jump through to get all the training I needed, but I’ve finished that part now.  I was trained on and can work independently on:

• Wet benches in the clean room
• Chemical vapor deposition
• Reactive ion etch
• Spectroscopic ellipsometer
• Thermal evaporator
• Scanning electron microscope
• Focused ion beam
• Atomic force microscope

As I was going through all the necessary training, my mentor (a grad student at Harvard) walked me through the details of the fabrication process.  For the last roughly 2.5 weeks, he was out of the country on vacation, so I worked independently.

The focused ion beam is awesome.  What I’m dealing with is an SEM that has another column poking down at the sample, 54 degrees from the vertical.  Instead of shooting accelerated electrons like the SEM, it shoots accelerated Gallium ions.  It can be used for imaging like an SEM (though the ions are much more abrasive to the sample).

Rest assured that this is singularly awesome.