Week+of+November+16-20

18th of November

I went into the lab for about 2 hours The images that I took today were not as too bad. The features of the gold were able to be defined, but there was a slight bit of a haze on the borders of these features. This just indicates that there is some drift. Scanning was not giving me difficulties, but I was having trouble trying to find a good area to scan. I was finding areas that started out good but then there seemed to a giant depression that would show up half way through the scan. So I had mostly partial images just because I was unable to really find a good area. Becky/Annette wants to join the Wiki just to make sure that the imformation that we were posting (SL and I) were updating was accurate.

20th of November I went into the lab for 2 hours All scans were taken at a 2000 angstrom sample size. The images are not that bad, but two of the scans 11200900AB and 11200900AC had weird lines on them that appeared as if there were thiols on the surface, which if there were this was a contaminate seeing that there should not have been thiols on the surface of the gold. Becky said that she would ask Dr. Kandel about this and also if there is anything that I can do to make my scans better. The needle that is usually an accurate indication of drift, does not seem to be moving that much, but the images seem to have a significant amount of drift in them. What I have been observing is that the scan progresses, often around halfway the image in the scan window become brighter and brighter. This means that the tip is drifting toward the surface as it scans, it does not crash, however, or atleat the electronics are not indicating that the tip is making contact with the surface. If there is a problem with the scope then this could be what is going on. Alot of the images actually look like the surface has been scored and that the tip may be dragging atoms when it arrives at a step. Seeing that I haven't really got any good images in a while I fear that something is wrong with the scope. This happened in the summer for a lesser period of time. The piezo had been broken and it wasn't realized at first. I looked to see if the same thing that occured last time was happening this time, but it wasn't. Last time there was a crack in the piezo and another time the epoxy was coming undone. It does not appear to be either of these.