Week+of+7-4+to+7-8

7-4-11 We had the day off to celebrate the birthday of America 7-5-11 Guido, Sharon, and I scanned annealed gold today and shot the laser once all day for a total of five minutes. The original voltage of the piezo stacks during all our scans was 16.56 V and we reduced it to zero before shooting the laser. After firing the laser, we put the voltage back up to 16.56 V then scanned. We did not get very good before/after images today though. Before: 7-5-11AK media type="custom" key="10199833" After: 7-5-11AL media type="custom" key="10199841"

7-6-11 Guido, Sharon and I scanned DTC2 and octanethiol on Au(III) today. We did not get very good images because of either bad tips or noise from the open lab with the pumps running in the background. However, near the end of the day we did get some pretty decent scans. 7-7-11 Guido's Polonium-210 came in and after today, he will no longer be working with Sharon and I for he will be working on his own project again. Today Sharon, Guido, and I began scanning with the sample from the day before ( Octanethiol and DTC2 on Au(III). We took one scan when Professor Kandel told us to get a new sample. While Guido made a solution of DTC2 and octanethiol, Sharon and i continued scanning the sample from the day before. We shot the laser at image 7-7-11AE for six minutes and got image 7-7-11AF. The beginning voltage of the piezo stack power supply was 29.39 volts. After trying to scan it right after shooting the laser we ran into a couple problems. We figured out that after shooting the laser, the sample had expanded a small amount. This caused a problem for us because we had turned the voltage up to only a point where it would start scanning right after we had shot the laser. This proved problematic because the gold, as it cooled, would retract back to its original size. After we saw this happen, we decided to let the sample cool for the same amount of time that we shot the laser at it. The second laser try of the day was on image before image 7-7-11AG/after image 7-7-11AI. The voltage of the piezo stack was 23.59 V before we shot the laser. We brought it down to nearly zero volts then shot the laser for 5 minutes. After that it cooled for five minutes. Then we raised the piezo voltage up to 24.25 which is where it began to scan.In our after image we did not see much change but we did notice that the scanning area had moved slightly down. For our third laser try, the piezo stack had been set to 24.75 volts and we heated and cooled the sample for 7 minutes each. This trial began on the image 7-7-11AI and the after image was 7-7-11AJ. The image did not have much change but it did shift up a little bit and one region appeared to have changed completely. Also, natalie suggested that we shoot the laser for a shorter time than we had been before, around 30 seconds to two minutes. Before:7-7-11AE media type="custom" key="10199865"

After: 7-7-11AF media type="custom" key="10199863" Before: 7-7-11AG media type="custom" key="10199871" After: 7-7-11AH media type="custom" key="10199897" Before:7-7-11AI media type="custom" key="10199921"

After: 7-7-11AJ media type="custom" key="10199931"

7-8-11 Sharon and I began the day scanning Guido's sample of octanethiol and DTC2 on Au(III) from the day before. We started the piezo stack at 27.03 V. We spent the first part of the day cutting a large box and filling the inner sides with foam to help prevent noise during scans. We did not get very far in scanning though because the sample holder/magnetic part of the holder broke when we were trying to fixate the wires into a position that we could use the plastic cover but we ended up not being able to so we cut the box that we are using now. The clamp system we previously had was not able to fit in the box so we made another system that was able to and then we tried to start scanning again, this time, the piezo power supply was at 26.91 volts. We did not get very good scans and then we switched samples after lunch. There was not really any progress found with the new sample and i left without seeing any scans of real value.