Week+of+2-13+and+2-14

2-13-12 I came in today and began scanning a sample of Octanethiol on Au(111) that Natalie prepared. The first tip was a double tip. I cut it and scanned again. The next tip was also very blurry. I changed the tip and scanned. The scan following was also incredibly blurry. I stopped it and cut the tip halfway through. "AA" had a large amount of streaks and was pretty blurry. I cut the tip after. This cu tip was even worse and I stopped the scan halfway through to change the tip. The next tip was also very poor. I cut it about halfway through the scan. The same fate befell the next tip. I changed the tip after this one. "AB" was very blurry. I changed the tip after this image. The next image, "AC", was much better but it had a double tip. I zoomed in to the upper right corner of "AC". This next scan was absolutely horried. I changed the tip afterward. The scan following this was also awful and after this it was time to go. Also, towards the end, I noticed that the piezoelectric power supply box's voltages kept fluctuating. I will check the Piezoelectric box tomorrow and see if the problem persists, then adjust accordingly. 2-13-12AA media type="custom" key="12491674" This image is very fuzzy. The few features in this image are decent but not well enough defined. The fuzziness, specifically in the bottom right quadrant, shows a very poor and dull tip. 2-13-12AB media type="custom" key="12491686" This image has a large amount of streaks. It has few features and the ones that are in it are not well-defined. The fuzziness of the top half explicitly shows the poor quality of the tip. 2-13-12AC media type="custom" key="12491692" There is a double tip in this image, as easily noticeable from the repeated features close to each other throughout the entirety of the image. The streaks in the upper right quadrant and in the bottom 40% of this image show a low quality tip. There are some decent looking features under the general haze of the image, mostly in the top right quadrant. Besides these however, it is hard to see anything at all, let alone of value. 2-14-12 I came in today and began scanning the same sample of Octanethiol on Au(111) from yesterday. I turned on the Piezoelectric power supply box and I waited for five minutes to see if it would flicker or drop in voltage. I decided I would scan until I encountered any problems. The first scan showed a very smooth surface as I was able to scan with a very small Z-range. However, the quality of the tip showed nothing of value and I stopped the scan about halfway through. I cut the tip afterwards. The next scan was of even lesser quality. As I went to stop this scan, I noticed that the Piezoelectric power supply box had dropped from the voltage that I set it to -- 40.0 V to 39.4 V. I checked the voltages of the batteries. I replaced all but battery #1 then began scanning again with 40.0 V charged to the Piezoelectric stack. My first image, "AA", was fairly blurry; I changed the tip after. The next scan was even worse than "AA". I stopped it halfway through then cut the tip. The following scan had the same unfortunate conditions. I also stopped this one about halfway through and changed the tip this time. "AB" had what appeared to have possibly been Octanethiol molecules on the surface. However, it is also possible that this was just noise. I zoomed in to the bottom middle region of it to see what I could get with the next smaller range. This scan did not live up to its expectations. However, Since it was time to go, I decided to just let this scan to give a better idea of what a scan of a small region and with a small Z-range should not look like. This image, "AC", has streaks, is blurry, and has no defined features. 2-14-12AA media type="custom" key="12491700" This image has a large amount of decent looking features. However, the valleys show the poor quality of the tip as they are covered throughout with noise and do not have very distinct boundaries. Specifically, the bottom right corner and the top middle region are very blurry and have many streaks. 2-14-12AB media type="custom" key="12491706" The top half of this image is mostly incomprehensible because of the large difference in elevation between the center hill and the two sides. Also there are more streaks and it is much fuzzier on the top half than the bottom half. There are structures on the bottom half that appear to arrange themselves in a manner that resembles that which we expect of Octanethiol. This is most likely just due to noise though. I zoomed in to most of the bottom region, extending downward past the scanning boundaries. 2-14-12AC media type="custom" key="12491708" This image essentially wipes out the possibility that there was Octanethiol molecules on the previous image because this image shows nothing similar and has even more noise than "AB". There is nothing really of any worth in this image and it just looks like unintelligible nonsense because of the high amount of noise that prevents us from seeing anything caused by the poor quality of the tip. 2-17-12 Today I resumed my work with MATLAB and got right back into the textbook where I last left off. Next week I hope to continue this and I believe I shall be receiving my own copy of the text book so I can work on it at home. I learned about input functions and how to write a simple but working program along with various other MATLAB functions such as the rand and the different statistical functions.
 * Battery# || Voltage ||
 * 1 || 7.62 ||
 * 2 || 4.85 ||
 * 3 || 4.71 ||
 * 4 || 4.89 ||
 * 5 || 4.96 ||
 * 6 || 4.89 ||
 * 7 || 4.88 ||
 * 8 || 5.00 ||
 * 9 || 5.07 ||
 * 10 || 5.05 ||
 * 11 || 5.06 ||
 * 12 || 5.13 ||
 * 13 || 5.13 ||
 * 14 || 5.17 ||
 * 15 || 5.08 ||