Peddie EXP Summer 2018

EXP has finally come to an end. Considering that silicon wafer should be better for dropcasting, I then created PS film embedded with gold nanorod on silicon substrate and measured it with ellipsometer. Besides, I finally got the chance to perform SEM imaging to sample films to see the overall dispersion and out-of–plane orientation of nanorods. As a result, nanorods were mostly evenly distributed all over the film; however, they are distributed in small nanorod clusters, suggesting that I can still dilute the nanorod solution for future adjustment of this research. As my 7-week research came to an end, I would like to thank all my group mates, especially Subarna and Lexi, for supporting my summer research throughout last two months. In addition to broadening my theoretical knowledge, gaining lots of hand on experience with all these fantastic facilities, and gradually growing up towards a real researcher, I am really grateful for being a part of the group. It was a pleasure to wat...

It is now early July and I have finally started my lab work. I arrived there at about 9 am on the very first day of my lab and found out that there were only two people in the office—Alex, a graduate student in engineering school, and me. “There should be more people in the office, but most of them went to a vacuum workshop today.” Alex told me. My work officially started at 10:30 am when my post doctor Subarna came to the lab. Familiarizing me with all the facilities in lab, Subarna first gave me a lab tour. Meanwhile, he showed me all the basic operations with vacuum chamber, ellipsometer, as well as the spin coater. During the rest of this past week, I was in the process of making my own films. I learned to cut Si wafer into 1*1 cm pieces and clean the surface of these Si wafer with duster and plasma which can effectively clean up all the extra organic particles from the wafer. Further, I prepared 10 percent polystyrene (PS 8000) toluene solution as the material for spin coating. ...